Deuteronomy 31:13

Deuteronomy 31:13, in plain English

The next generation—children who haven't experienced the law before—will hear it and learn to revere God and follow what it says, as long as Israel lives in the land.

Why it's here

Moses is solving a problem that every community faces: how do you pass faith to the next generation? You can't assume kids will inherit their parents' belief. They have to hear the law, understand it, and make it their own. This practice ensures that even children born in Canaan (not the wilderness) stay connected to their covenant identity.

Who's speaking

Moses is speaking about the effect of the practice he's instituted.

Where it sits in the story

Throughout Scripture, you see this concern: will the next generation follow God? Moses is putting a structure in place to help that happen. It's what every believing parent and church still wrestles with today.

The scholarly reading

Crucially, the next generation—those born after the conquest who lack direct experience of the wilderness—must also hear and learn the law, ensuring continuity of covenantal commitment across generational discontinuity.

Language and setting

The phrase 'children who do not know' (בְנֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָדְעוּ, b'neychem asher lo-yad'u) explicitly identifies the problem that haunted later Judges and Kings narratives: spiritual amnesia. Each generation must consciously appropriate the covenant rather than inherit it passively. The verb 'do not know' (לֹא־יָדְעוּ, lo-yad'u) suggests both factual ignorance and relational unfamiliarity—these children lack experiential memory of Exodus wonders. This verse articulates what we might call 'each generation's responsibility'—a principle that shaped medieval Jewish philosophy through Maimonides and influenced Protestant covenant theology through Calvin's doctrine of the continuing relevance of God's law.

Voice

Moses continuing his instruction regarding the septennial reading.

Significance

This attention to intergenerational transmission establishes a principle that becomes central to Jewish pedagogy (as codified in the Passover Haggadah) and Christian catechesis—faith requires active transmission, not automatic inheritance.

11when all Israel comes before the LORD your God at the place He will choose, you are to read this law in the hearing of all Israel.

12Assemble the people—men, women, children, and the foreigners within your gates—so that they may listen and learn to fear the LORD your God and to follow carefully all the words of this law.

13Then their children who do not know the law will listen and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as you live in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”

14Then the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, the time of your death is near. Call Joshua and present yourselves at the Tent of Meeting, so that I may commission him.”

15Then the LORD appeared at the tent in a pillar of cloud, and the cloud stood over the entrance to the tent.

Read all of Deuteronomy 31 — Moses commissions Joshua and writes the law in a book. He knows they'll rebel — and writes a song to remind them why.