The Shape of Deuteronomy – Overview

Meredith Kline’s famous fivefold structure of Deuteronomy needs an upgrade.

In his book, That You May Prosper: Dominion by Covenant (1987), Ray Sutton describes and develops the structure of the biblical covenant. His Exhibit A is the structure of the Book of Deuteronomy, and he adopts the outline of the book presented by Meredith Kline in Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy (1963), which was, in turn, based on various earlier works by others. Kline writes:

While Sutton builds upon Kline, he also wisely rejects some of Kline’s assertions. Most importantly, Sutton believes that: a) the suzerainty treaties of the Ancient Near East borrowed from the divinely-inspired biblical covenant pattern, not the other way around; and, b) that the covenant structure can indeed be traced from the Old Testament into the New, as recognized by some of Kline’s predecessors on the subject.

For these scholars, discerning the basic formula of the biblical covenant in specific terms was not easy. For a start, the primary inspiration was Hittite covenants that had six steps. And the complexity of the arrangement of the Books of Moses was no help. But it did seem that boiling it all down to five fundamental steps was the solution. James B. Jordan writes:

The Bible reveals that God’s way of managing history is by making covenants with His people. There is a succession of such covenants in the Bible, each more glorious than the previous, each absorbing and transfiguring the previous, until finally we come to the New Covenant in Jesus Christ. There are two dimensions of these covenants. The first is the activity of covenant making, the sequence of events entailed in bringing in a new covenant.

 

The second is the covenant document that summarizes the content of the newly established covenant, and its order of presentation. Generally speaking, the order of presentation in the covenant document is the same as the sequence of events in the covenant’s establishment. This order or sequence has been analyzed variously by different scholars. Some have seen three, some four, some five, some six, and some seven aspects of the covenant. We can say that in its fullest manifestations, God’s covenant with man, which we can illustrate from the Mosaic covenant, entails the following steps and aspects:

 

We could probably come up with other aspects as well, depending on how much detail we wished to go into. This covenant order can be helpfully and biblically grouped in more than one way. It is possible and desirable to see the sequence as proceeding from God’s sovereign Control (1-3), to manifestations of God’s sovereign Authority (4-7), and culminating in revelations of God’s sovereign Presence with His people (8-12). This is based on John Frame’s work. It is also possible and desirable to see the sequence as having five aspects:

 

God’s transcendence (1, 2)
New order and hierarchy (3-5)
Stipulations (6, 7)
Sanctions (blessings and curses) (8, 9)
Succession arrangements (10-12).¹

 

Jordan then goes on to mention the sevenfold expression of the covenant pattern, which first appears in the days of the Creation Week.

But Frame’s threefold sequence, Kline’s fivefold sequence, and Jordan’s sevenfold sequence are all expressions of the same process at various levels of complexity. The threefold sequence is the divine relationship of the Father and the Son by the Spirit. This becomes fivefold through the addition of two transitional steps: the Father’s word to the Son and the Son’s response to the Father. The fivefold sequence—which structures the first five chapters of Genesis, and also the Pentateuch—becomes sevenfold through the expansion of its central step, the Stipulations or Ethics, into the three primary offices of Man: priest, king, and prophet. These describe a growth to maturity from one who merely obeys orders (Garden), to one who legislates and acts on God’s behalf (Land), to one who not only speaks for God but also judges the nations on God’s behalf (World).

For a summary explanation of these three stages (3, 5, and 7), see “A Tour of the Tablets” in my book, The Shape of Isaiah: A Covenant-literary Analysis (Isaiah 1-12).

Kline’s breakdown of Deuteronomy was an excellent start, but it has some glaring problems. The first thing to notice is the relative brevity of the Transcendence step compared to the Ethics step. The first is only five verses, whereas the third is twenty-two whole chapters! In my experience, that degree of contrast in size is a sign that something is not right.

His basic outline is as follows:

I. Preamble: Covenant Mediator (Deuteronomy 1:1-5)

II. Historical Prologue: Covenant History (Deuteronomy 1:6-4:49)

III. Stipulations: Covenant Life (Deuteronomy 5:1-26:19)

IV. Sanctions: Covenant Ratification (Deuteronomy 27:1-30:20)

V. Dynastic Disposition: Covenant Continuity (Deuteronomy 31:1-34:12)

 

Part of the problem is that steps 1 and 2 in this outline actually comprise step 1. The reason is that each of the book’s sections also has an internal structure, and sometimes a divide between subsections is mistaken for a division between major sections. So Deuteronomy 1:1-4:49 is actually a single major section.

Steps 4 and 5 in Kline’s outline are clear demarcations in the text that fit the purpose of the legal Sanctions and Succession arrangements. So Kline’s basic outline needs no correction there. But his lengthy Stipulations/Ethics section is not only a conflation of what should be steps 2 and 3, it is actually four entire steps because Deuteronomy does not follow the fivefold pattern; it follows the sevenfold pattern. Here is my suggested outline of the book based on this thesis:

The transition between the Kingdom and Prophecy steps is not in any way pronounced, so the placement of the division between steps 4 and 5 might seem entirely arbitrary. I thought it might be possible that this is not the exact location for the section divide, but I could not see any other plausible location for it. What does seem to change is the domain of the laws—from the roles of the governors to the concerns of the citizens. If only there were some means of verification for the placement of the shift from step 4 to step 5 in this sevenfold outline. But wait … there is!

I purposely outlined the Book of Deuteronomy without any reference to Kline or Sutton for a more detailed analysis, one that went beyond their five basic points. As it turns out, after getting hold of Kline’s actual book, his more detailed outline—while it fails in some respects—vindicates my suggested divides. Put simply, he noticed the same section breaks, so I am a second witness to the location of these partitions. But without the sevenfold covenant pattern as a reference, in his analysis they are just a partitioned compilation in what should be a more defined structure.

Here is Kline’s more detailed outline for you to compare with the sevenfold structure above:

When I have time, I would like to do an analysis of each of the seven sections of the book and compare my results with Kline’s more detailed summary. Or perhaps you would like to have a go!

1. James B. Jordan, Covenant Sequence in Leviticus & Deuteronomy, 3-5.