NOTES for Deu 9:1-29
In describing the situation, Moses makes the emphasis entirely clear: the people receive the land not because of their righteousness, but because of the wickedness of the nations that inhabit it at that moment. Here we see the logic of history that stands behind many events, especially conquests, coups and revolutions. Most often, what lies behind all these things is not God’s will but, as theologians usually say in such cases, His permission.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, God does not side with one party against another. He simply steps aside and withdraws, not because He is indifferent, but because, as a rule, He supports neither side. This is hardly surprising: in that same overwhelming majority of cases, the parties involved care nothing either for God or for His will. God takes no one’s side because no one is on His side, and God will not impose Himself on those who have no need of Him.
With His people, however, the situation is unusual. The people of God are involved in history just like all other nations, and they are no better, no more righteous and no more spiritual than any other nation. Yet God has a special plan, a special design for His people, and this is what makes His people unusual and distinguishes them from all the other nations of the earth. Naturally, the people do not become better merely because God has a special plan for them, but their path will nevertheless differ from the path of every other nation on earth. For God must bring His people to the place where He wants to see them, where He has appointed them to meet Him.
The path of any other nation may be determined by a chain of divine permissions which, to that nation itself, will look like accidents and the vicissitudes of its historical fate—just as happens to a person who, not knowing the way, moves from one accident to another and calls such movement destiny. The path of the people of God, however, is in any case determined by God, though it runs among ordinary nations, such as those that inhabited pre-Israelite Palestine.
They were no worse, but also no better, than any other nation, and were therefore subject to the same vicissitudes of fallen history as all other nations. Yet God deprives them of the land not because of some exceptional sins of theirs, but because of the ordinary wickedness characteristic of all fallen nations. Likewise, He gives His own people the land not because of their exceptional righteousness, but because such is His plan. Yet the wickedness of the nations whom God drives from the land makes that expulsion possible, allowing God to carry out His plan concerning His people.