"Finding the Consecrated Place"
BKC
When Israel entered the Promised Land, God would choose a place … to put His name (cf. vv. 11, 21; 14:23–24; 16:2, 6, 11; 26:2) that is, He would choose a site for the tabernacle, the place where God and the people would meet (cf. Ex. 33:7–11).
This command did not mean that the tabernacle would always stay in the same place, for it was moved at God’s command. The ultimate fulfillment of this command came centuries later
The command for a single sanctuary promoted or emphasized three things: the unity of God (i.e., He is One, not many), the purity of the Israelites’ worship of the Lord, and the people’s political and spiritual unity.
An Israelite “worship service” would be characterized by joy
Everyone does as he sees fit may imply some laxity on the people’s part in observing the prohibition (Lev. 17:3–4).
NBC
In contrast to this false worship the Lord had chosen a place at which his Name should be remembered (5).
The place is not identified. Location itself is not important, but only that it is the Lord’s.
The command to go to the place (5) has in mind the regular worship of Israel.
The dominant note in this worship is to be joy.
V 7, in fact, offers an insight into the vision of Deuteronomy: a united people rejoicing in worship in the presence of its one God.
Vs 8–10 recall the current situation of the Israelites, not yet able, because of their desert lifestyle, to do all that would later be required.
The promised rest from their enemies (see 3:20 and comment) will have been won
Vs 11–12 repeat the commands of vs 6–7, including the call to rejoice, but also issue an instruction to include the poor and weak in the community in the worship. We have seen that this is a basic implication of God’s own character, to be worked out among his people (see 10:17–19). Now it is repeated in the context of worship. Deuteronomy knows that worship without either joy or love is dead.
UBS Handbook
An alternative translation model for this verse is:
• The Lord will choose a place somewhere in Israel [or, the land] where he will live and reveal his presence. You must find that place and go to worship the Lord there.
You shall seek the place: this is from the point of view of Moses and the Israelites in Moab. God will choose the exact place, and the Israelites are to seek it. This is not in the sense that God will keep his choice a secret, which they will have to discover, but that they are to go directly to the place God chooses, since he would make his choice known.
The command is that the people of Israel are to act differently in the Promised Land from the way they are acting here this day (again there is emphasis on “this day”).
You have not as yet come to: this is better expressed as “you have not yet arrived at,” or, to make it plainer, “you have not yet entered the land where.…”
The two nouns are a compound phrase meaning “the inheritance where you will rest.”
The noun rest means primarily security, safety from enemies
A more normal and intelligible ordering of the sentence is found in TEV: “The Lord will choose a single place where he is to be worshiped.”
NAC
Once the place of community worship had become identified, the people of Israel were to go there
What is in view is the permanency of a central site, one to be chosen by the Lord at some indeterminate point in the future.
The point still remains, however, that something decisive would occur with the establishment of a central shrine, something quite different from the religious practice of the desert
Whereas it was permissible to do as each individual saw fit (lit., “what is right in his own eyes”) in the years of wandering, this would no longer be the case when the community reached the “resting place,”
TTOT: Dt: An Intro & Commentary
When the Israelites came to this place, the place of the name, they were before Yahweh (7, 12; 26:2, 5).
Where then was this place?
it was to be identified with the central sanctuary which was situated in a variety of places.
In a time of transition Yahweh might choose several places in turn until finally the precise and permanent site was chosen.
But whatever the place, it was the divine authority and the divine presence that gave significance to it.
The phrase translated in the AV even unto his habitation (lĕšiknô) seems to contain the noun šēken, ‘habitation’, but this word occurs only here in the Old Testament. The AV makes the phrase dependent on the verb seek: unto his habitation shall ye seek. On the other hand the RSV takes the verb seek as the main verb in the sentence and regards the consonants lškn as having been vocalized lĕšakkĕnô, i.e. as the infinitive of the verb šikkēn meaning ‘to cause to dwell’, i.e. ‘to tabernacle’. The verb is so used in verse 11 and 26:2 and may have been used here originally.
doing whatever is right in his own eyes (8). What was permissible in a time of transition
The people were commanded to give up the laxity that had hitherto characterized their practice. The expression every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes may denote licence (Judg. 17:6; 21:25), or liberty. In a day of transition liberty was allowed to the people,
International Comment.
calls for a new order, a transformation:
where human design determines the place and nature of worship.
Here is the significance of the Lord’s choosing a place for the divine name to dwell: The emphasis is not upon one place so much as it is upon the place the Lord chooses.
The central activity of Israel’s life, the worship of the Lord, is fully shaped and determined by the Lord. That worship will take place “in one of your tribes” (v. 14; cf. v. 5), but the choice is open.
It will be the Lord’s choice, and it may change. The point is that there is an appropriate place where the Lord may be found and worshiped, but that place is not arbitrary and anywhere.
In the Lord’s order, the Lord will choose and reveal the locus of dwelling and encounter with human life and with God’s people.
As it sets forth the way it is to be when Israel inherits the salvation gift of the land, a place for life as God’s people, the text before us is a kind of anticipation of the Kingdom of God. That is, it knows a present situation but anticipates imminently a quite different one in which the Lord’s name and the Lord’s order will be established.
The Deuteronomic word about the Lord’s choosing a place for God’s name to dwell in the midst of the people is not vitiated. It is confirmed, but that happens now in the One whom God sent, who has become the center of worship,
Evang Comment.
Israelites are to seek the Lord and worship him as he prescribes and in places which he has designated
“The place the LORD your God will choose” (v. 5) should not be taken to refer to a single place. It is not urging centralization of worship. Rather, it refers to wherever the tabernacle was to be located and the name of the Lord was to be worshiped, whether in Shiloh, Bethel, Gilgal, Shechem, or Jerusalem