Ver. 32. Thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it— See on chap. Deuteronomy 4:2. One would wonder, says Bishop Patrick, that so learned a man as Maimonides should have laboured to prove from this the immutability of the law of Moses. It is strange that he could not see, what some of his brethren have seen, that though God did not permit the Israelites to alter these laws, he bound not up Himself from changing them; this another Jewish writer very well illustrates: "A physician prescribes a diet to his patient for such a time as he judges convenient, which he does not declare to the sick man; but when the time comes that the physician hath obtained his end, he changes the diet, permits the patient what he formerly forbade, and prohibits that which he formerly permitted." This exactly agrees with what our Blessed Saviour has done.
REFLECTIONS.—As nothing would preserve them more effectually from idolatry than forbidding all sacrifices and public offerings, except in one place under the immediate eye of God's ministers, we have this again and again inculcated. 1. God's promises, when they were in quiet possession of the land, to choose the place where he would put his name, erect his tabernacle, and manifest his presence in the divine Shechinah. He left not the place to their option, lest they should dispute about the choice; nor mentions it as yet, because it was enough for them to know his pleasure now, and they should have farther direction when it was needful. Blessed be God! all distinctions of place in Christ Jesus are now destroyed; every where we may have access to a throne of grace, and find our services accepted in the Redeemer. 2. When the place was fixed, they must there offer their sacrifices; and all their holy things must be eaten there, before the Lord, with joy and gladness of heart, by them and their families. God's service is delightful: to be melancholy, is to dishonour it. Religion was designed to be our pleasure, not our burden. 3. Though all their devoted things might only be eaten before the Lord, no restraint is said upon them respecting common and allowed meats: they might kill and eat without reserve, and both the unclean and the clean might eat them alike; with this proviso, that they lived according to the blessing of God upon them, neither luxuriously extravagant, nor penuriously saving. Excess and covetousness are alike dishonourable to God. He gives us his blessings richly to enjoy; and whilst he would have us eat our bread and drink our wine with a cheerful heart, he wills that we should use his gifts with that sobriety and temperance, which may satisfy our natural appetite, without making provision for our sinful lusts.