These [are] the words of the covenant
Not what go before, but follow after, in the next chapters, to the end of the book; in which are various promises of grace, and promises of good things, both with respect to Jews and Gentiles, intermixed with other things:
which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in
the land of Moab;
or to declare unto them, and acquaint them with, they being now in the plains of Moab, ready to enter into the land of, Canaan:
besides the covenant which he made with them at Horeb:
or Sinai; which Jarchi interprets, besides the curses in Leviticus, delivered on Sinai; he seems to have respect to ( Leviticus 26:14-46 ) . This covenant was different from that at Sinai, spoken of ( Exodus 24:8 ) ; being made not only at a different time, at near forty years' distance, and at a different place, nor Sinai; but when Israel were come nearer Mount Sion, and were actually possessed of part of their inheritance, the land of promise, that part of the land of Moab which the two kings of the Amorites had seized and dwelt in, whom Israel had dispossessed; and with different persons, that generation being dead, excepting a very few, which were at Sinai: but it was different as to the substance and matter of it, it not only including that, and being a renewal of it, as is generally thought, but containing such declarations of grace which had not been made before, not only respecting the repenting and returning Israelites, but the Gentiles also; for this covenant was made with the stranger, as well as with Israel, ( Deuteronomy 29:11 ) ; and relates to the times of the Messiah, the call of the Gentiles, the conversion of the Jews, and their return to their own land in the latter day.