Deuteronomy 4:32-40
Because the Lord has revealed Himself and redeemed Israel in a way no other god and no other nation can claim, Israel must know Him as the only God and live under His covenant word.
32 For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and from the one end of the sky to the other, whether there has been anything as great as this thing is, or has been heard like it?
33 Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the middle of the fire, as you have heard, and live?
34 Or has God tried to go and take a nation for himself from among another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that Yahweh your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?
35 It was shown to you so that you might know that Yahweh is God. There is no one else besides him.
36 Out of heaven he made you to hear his voice, that he might instruct you. On earth he made you to see his great fire; and you heard his words out of the middle of the fire.
37 Because he loved your fathers, therefore he chose their offspring after them, and brought you out with his presence, with his great power, out of Egypt;
38 to drive out nations from before you greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is today.
39 Know therefore today, and take it to heart, that Yahweh himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath. There is no one else.
40 You shall keep his statutes and his commandments which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which Yahweh your God gives you for all time.
Because the LORD has revealed Himself and redeemed Israel in a way no other god and no other nation can claim, Israel must know Him as the only God and live under His covenant word.
Moses summons Israel to consider the whole scope of human history and ask whether any nation has ever experienced what Israel experienced: the LORD speaking from fire, redeeming a people from another nation, and revealing Himself so that Israel might know He alone is God and keep His commands in the land.
Moses addresses Israel on the plains of Moab after the wilderness generation has fallen and before the new generation crosses the Jordan. Having warned about idolatry, exile, and return, he now calls Israel to reason from the LORD's incomparable acts at creation, Horeb, and the exodus.
Hear, Obey, and Do Not Forget: The Incomparable God and His Word
Moses closes his historical prologue with the most theologically dense argument in the first address: Israel's singular privilege is that the incomparable God spoke directly to them at Horeb, gave them righteous statutes, and remains near to them in every call — and this privilege makes their obedience, their memory, and their refusal to manufacture any image of God an absolute covenant obligation, with exile and return both held within the LORD's own sovereign plan.