WORDS — and the Hebrew name of the fifth book of the Torah, taken as always from its own opening line: ELLEH HA-DEVARIM, 'these are the words that Moses spoke' (Deuteronomy 1:1). It could not be better named. Moses does almost nothing in this book but talk: it is three long sermons and a song, delivered in the last weeks of his life to a generation that did not see Egypt. ⚠️ The ENGLISH title comes from a different route — the Greek DEUTERONOMION, 'second law,' from the Septuagint's rendering of a phrase at 17:18 that in Hebrew means 'a COPY of this instruction.' The Greek title has stuck for two thousand years and is not quite what the Hebrew says: this is not a second law but the first one preached. DAVAR itself covers word, thing, matter, affair — in Hebrew a word is an object with weight. → first discussed at Deut 1:1