A. Luther's Notes on the Fifth Book of Moses. *)
Presented to his monastic brothers from February 23, 1523 to the beginning of 1525. Published before May 1525.
Newly translated from the Latin.
[Luther's dedicatory letter.]
Grace and peace to the venerable father and Lord in Christ, to the Lord Georg von Polenz, the righteous bishop of the church in Samland, to his father who is to be highly honored in the Lord Christ.
I have resolved, revered father, to dedicate the fifth book of Moses, which I have treated for my brothers in casual conversation at home, and which is to go out publicly at their request, to your name and to offer it to your reverence. This I have had in mind for a long time, but have been prevented by business; now at last I do it also through this Brie, since God has graciously permitted it; not thinking as if all that my humble self has attempted on the most distinguished and principal source (auctore) of all sacred books were of such a
great man, because the prestige and majesty of it should rightly deter me and any man from the interpretation, as it is written [Ps. 50, 16. Vulg.]: "To the sinner God has said: Why do you declare my rights?" But necessity and the consideration of salvation have forced me to submit to it, in order to learn and teach godliness and worship (religione).
But in order to finally show my heart's attitude towards you, I have taken this opportunity, so that I may at least somewhat belong to those who bear witness to your sincere faith in Christ and your active love for his brothers. So we believe, if the Lord should deign to do so
*This writing is a collection of the lectures on Deuteronomy, which Luther gave to his monastic brothers in the Augustinian monastery from February 23, 1523 onwards (Buchwald, Andreas Poach's Sammlung ungedruckter Predigten D. M. Luthers, p. XV1) until the first months of the year 1525 (Köstlin, Martin Luther, 3. Aufl., Vol. I, p. 615); it was published, with a dedication by Luther to Georg von Polenz, Bishop of Samland, who was fond of the Gospel and was responsible for its spread, in April 1525 at the latest, because the first reprint appeared in Strasbourg as early as May. The first edition appeared under the title: Dsutsronornion LIoss ourn unnotutionibus. LInrt. Dutbor. IVittsinbsrMS. 1525. After the dedication to Polenz follows another title: Dsutoronoruion ^loss sx Dbruoo oustiMtus ourn nnnotnt. Murtini Dutbsri. IVittorubsrMS 1524. at the end: VuittsrnborMS, npnck Dobnnnsm Imtkt. In the same year, reprints were published in Strasbourg by Johannes Knobloch (Nsnss ZInjo) and in Basel by Adam Petri (Onlsnckis chuliis). A German translation was also published in the same year in Strasbourg (without indication of the printer) under the title: "Verzeychnungen über das Fünfft Buch Mose, Dsutsronoiniuin genannt" 2c. In the collections Latin: Wittenberger (1549), Dorn. Ill, col. 14b, without the dedication; Jenaer (1603), Dorn. Ill, toi. 74b and Erlanger oxsZ- oxp., Dorn. XIII, p. 1. The arrangement of the text in the Wittenberg and Erlangen is such that the Latin text of the entire fifth book of Moses, improved from the Hebrew, precedes and is followed by the notes; in the Jena, however, the notes follow the text of each chapter. The dedication is also found in Latin in Aurifaber, vol. II, p. 285 and in De Wette, vol. II, p. 647. In German translation, the text is found in the Wittenberger (1556), vol. VIII, p. 149, without the dedication; in the Altenburger, vol. V, p. 1031; in the Leipziger, vol. IV, 92 and in Walch. In the German editions, of course, the printing of the text of the entire fifth book of Moses has been omitted. We give a new translation of this scripture according to the Erlangen edition, comparing the Wittenberg and Jena editions.
that, inspired by your so new and extraordinary (singulari) example, also some other bishops and princes may delight the Church of God with a new miracle, rejecting the statutes and human opinions, and accepting, honoring and spreading the pure Word of God, as their profession and office requires. For, praising the gifts of GOD in you, we do not praise you, but extol the glorious wonder of the grace of GOD, which, ivie we see, is strong, reigns, and triumphs in you, and hear it with joy that, as Amos speaks [Cap. 3, 12.As a shepherd snatches two knees or the lobe of an ear from the mouth of a wolf," so the Lord has chosen you alone among all the bishops of the earth and has delivered you from the jaws of the devil, which he has opened wide like hell and devoured them all. For we see nothing else in the other bishops (although I hope that there are still some people like Nicodeinus among them) than that, after the emperor and kings and princes have turned (subversis), they rage and rage against the returning or rather rising gospel, so that they may fulfill anew the word of the second Psalm [V. 2]: "The kings of the land rebel, and the lords counsel with one another against the Lord and His anointed," by which they at the same time cause God to fulfill in them what follows [v. 4]: "But He who dwells in heaven laughs at them, and the Lord mocks them. He will one day speak to them in his wrath, and with his fury he will terrify them."
But you have been given the very special and wonderful grace that you not only accepted the word and believed it, but also freely confessed it publicly, taught it and, according to your episcopal standing, saw to it that it was taught in your entire diocese (dioecesin), you also provided abundantly for those who work on the word: when the wicked see this, they are angry and gnash their teeth and harden themselves about it in vain. This grace that God has shown you, I could not pass over with silence, but had to apply it, as Paul does [1 Cor. 8, 1. ff.] with the Macedonians against the Corinthians, to every
I have not shied away from spreading, praising and singing your praises for the glory of God, for the spreading of the Gospel, for the growth of faith, for the consolation of the weak and of those who suffer in various places among us, for the uplifting of the fainthearted; finally also for the terror and disgrace of the enemies of the Word and of the idols who sit in the place of the bishops, who know nothing else nor can do anything else than to exercise tyranny over the wretched people. I have not been afraid to burden you with the hatred and envy of the other bishops, kings and princes by this praise, or even to put you in danger of your life, since nowadays no shameful deed is so great as this one, and is considered equal to the highest desecration of the sanctuary, namely that one confesses the Gospel of God, for the sake of which many have already shed their blood with the greatest constancy. Among these, especially Heinrich and Johannes stand out, who were burned to death by the Louvain Sophists, and after them our Heinrich von Zütphen, the evangelist of Bremen, who was killed by the Ditmar beasts not only with a fire or a kind of death. God knows what is still waiting for us, if we should otherwise be worthy to become comrades of them, and also to suffer disgrace for the sake of the name of the Lord. I say that I have not shied away from exposing you to this danger, since I am firmly convinced that He who honored you with the word of the cross will also strengthen you with the spirit of the cross, and will also triumph in your flesh, not only over the blasphemies of your name and the hatred and rage of the powerful in the world, but also over the powers and violence (if it should be necessary to suffer them) of Satan with his whole kingdom. For we know that he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world [1 John 4:4].
Moreover, so that this grace and gift of God would be even more abundant, the Lord has added this and provided it by His goodness, that you have a sovereign who loves the Gospel with all his heart, that famous hero Adelbert, from the lineage of the Margraves of Brandenburg, the Grandmaster
Prussia, which is given in the same spirit, to speak with the words of the prophet [Is. 32, 8.], to have princely thoughts. Thus it happens that under the Christian protection of both of you, the people of Prussia, who perhaps have never had the Gospel other than obscured or falsified, now, as it runs far and wide and produces fruit, hear it quite purely and clearly through the ineffable beneficence of God. For I believe that up to this time the Gospel has never come to Germany completely clear and shining in full light, although I do not doubt that the Lord has always known how to save His own everywhere, even in the midst of Sodom and Gomorrah. And behold the strange fate: to Prussia the gospel runs in full course and with full sails, where it was not called and where it was not sought, but in Upper and Lower Germany, where it came and arrived of its own free will, it is blasphemed with all fury and nonsense, pushed back and driven away, so that one can see fulfilled in this the remarkable (egregiam) fate of the gospel, of which Paul Rom. 10, 20. f. (Is. 65, 1. 2.] says: "I am invented by those who did not seek me, and I appeared to those who did not ask for me." But of Israel he says, "All day long I have stretched out my hands to the people who will not be told and who contradict, who walk in ways that are not good." But I will return to you.
Therefore, dear bishop (praesul), let this booklet be attributed to you, so that through you and in you Christ may be praised on this occasion, and at the same time, under your name, those may be served who have not previously understood the fifth book of Moses as well as it is given to me. For there are many, and among them some, who have made themselves believe that they are certainly the masters of all, who consider Moses and the whole Old Testament to be of very little value, since they think (velut) that one should be satisfied with the Gospel; from their opinion every Christian man should keep completely away. For it is certain that, just as the wise of the world say that Homer is the father of all poets, the source, indeed, a sea of all learning and wisdom and eloquence, so our Moses the
is the source and father of all prophets and holy books, that is, of heavenly wisdom and eloquence. But since at this time (hoc saeculo) everything is beginning to be restored, as if the day of the restoration of all things were at hand, I have come to undertake this, whether perhaps Moses also could be restored, and I could lead the little books back to the source. For it is very sweet and, both for the understanding and to support the memory, very convenient and useful to see the footsteps of the later prophets in Moses, as they have read him, learned him, taught him and had him in their hands day and night. From his cornucopia (copiae cornu) all their treasures are taken, so that they themselves can also say about him: Of his fullness and abundance we have all received, as he himself saw beforehand and foretold that it would come to pass, in his song [Deut. 32, 2.]: "Let my teaching drip like the rain, and my speech flow like dew" 2c.
But I have taken care that I first of all treat everything in the most simple way, and have not let myself be carried away to the (so-called) secret interpretations, if sometimes, as it seems to some, inconsistent and foolish laws occur. First of all, Moses teaches the right godliness by preaching the faith in detail and abundantly, with attached! very beautiful ceremonies, by which the ignorant people must be caught and held, so that they do not invent their own, which God hates. Then he has to deal with the order of the civil regime and the preservation of love among each other, by establishing everything with very appropriate and reasonable laws and making decrees about it. There is nothing foolish or void, but everything is necessary and useful, which will be easily understood by those who know what it means to hold the office of authority among a people that is very free (paulo liberiore) and wise in its own eyes, as this Jewish people was, where necessity not infrequently compels one to order and do and permit such things, which otherwise would be laughed at and ridiculed with good reason.
I also don't believe that GOd will come out of a
He said that he wanted to form this people by such ceremonies for another reason than because he saw that the great house of the people would be most moved and taken in by these larvae and outward appearances. In order that they should not be empty larvae and a mere spectacle, he added his word, as it were, as a weighty content and essence of the larvae, so that they would become serious and important (graves), and they [the Jews] would know that God himself liked what they [the ceremonies] contained, lest, if they set up others without the word itself, they should become mere games and buffoonery. Such are our ceremonies in the kingdom of Pabst, which are devised after the example of the Mosaic ones. Because these have no command in God's words, by which they become serious and important, they are nothing but quite meaningless and ridiculous imitation of the Jews.
However, I have subsequently also added short allegories, almost in every single chapter, not as if I cared much about it, but in order to forestall the foolish efforts of some who have a desire to deal with allegories, as we see in Jerome, Origen, and other ancient writers that they had a not at all happy and wholesome way of using all allegories.
They have been concerned only with allegories, i.e., with speeches about distant things (alieniloquia), so that readers might be deceived by a false pretense of allegories. In order that the readers may not be deceived with a false semblance of allegory, I have thought it worth the trouble to show them that they are rightly concerned with allegories when they find in them, as much as possible, the service of the Word or the course of the Gospel and of faith. For all the figures and meanings in the law and in the people of Moses, however many there may be, go to this.
But the Lord, who works all things in all, who has also begun his good work in you, keep you and let you increase, so that you may become a truly great bishop in the word of God even in this life, and in the life to come, when the arch-shepherd of shepherds and bishops will come, receive the unfading crown [1 Pet. 5:4]. To him, I pray, commit me in your holy prayer, and in his grace prosper you. Amen. Wittenberg 1525.
Your D. Martin Luther.