The Book Beside the Ark

Reflecting on the Instructions in Deuteronomy 31:26

This post is for paid subscribers. If you’ve been encouraged by the content of this newsletter, and if you’d like to have complete and unending access to the huge archive of biblical theology articles, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting the work that goes into this site.

Near the end of Deuteronomy, while the Israelites and Moses were in the plains of Moab, Moses had some instructions for the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant. He said, “Take this Book of the Law and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against you” (Deut. 31:26).

We know that inside the ark of the covenant were tablets of the Ten Commandments (Deut. 10:1–2). But those tablets were not what Moses’s words in Deuteronomy 31:26 referred to. What is this “Book of the Law” that would be placed “by the side” of the ark? And why did it matter?