They then found themselves living on the boundary between exile and return. To diverse boundary settings Deuteronomy speaks. More than any other book of the Torah, it is a collection of words, not of actions. Moses preaches the teaching of Sinai. After all, the original covenant and law are still there.
Life is still the motive and the goal.
New occasions teach new duties. No canonical text is ever completed, fossilized, and absolutized. Boundary situations require new words about old words. So Deuteronomy takes the ancient traditions of the Mosaic age, itself on the boundary between wilderness and land, and restates, that is to say, reinterprets them in a vital way for later generations facing new occasions on new boundaries. This Bible of words shows us how to appropriate the faith of our ancestors.