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Deuteronomy gets its name from the fact that it is the second (Greek: deuteros) giving of the law (nomos). By way of summation, the first five books of the OT are called the Pentateuch or the five books of Moses.
- Genesis covers from the creation of the world through the deaths of Jacob and Joseph, and the establishment of the Israelites in Egypt.
- Exodus picks up with the Israelites in Egypt, being forced into slavery by a wicked Pharaoh, and their subsequent deliverance via the Ten Plagues which is at least 80 years (the life of Moses); it also covers Passover, the parting of the Red Sea, their time at Mt. Sinai and the giving of the Ten Commandments, and also the description of what the Tabernacle is to be. This part is the bulk of Exodus, but the time span covers only a couple of years.
- Leviticus is the first giving of the Law, and has almost no narrative with it. In some ways, this book doesn’t cover any time.
- Numbers covers the bulk of the 40 years of the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness, lasting about 38 years — from the time that the spies came back with the evil report of the land of Canaan until they start taking over the land by driving out the wicked Canaanites. During this time, all the men died, who were aged 20+ at the time they refused to go into the land of Canaan, and their children grew up to become the next generation of adults.
- Deuteronomy is Moses’s giving of the law to this new generation of Israelites, those who were children or not even born at the time of Mt. Sinai. Part of this giving of the law is undoubtedly just making sure that they knew it, since they were going to be spread out over the land before long. This book, like Leviticus, also covers very little time, and has little narrative, except at the end it says that Moses dies.
Deut. 1 starts by giving their physical location, and also gives the time: the 40th year, the 11th month, and the first day of the month. In the rest of the chapter and through part of Deut. 3, Moses then gives a brief history to his audience of the time covered in the book of Numbers: that the Israelites sent spies into the land of Canaan, their subsequent refusal to go take the land, that the people were nomads for 38 more years until all the adults of that generation had died off, then they began to take the land on the eastern side of the Jordan River, etc. Also in Deut. 3, we are told that while Moses wasn’t allowed to enter into the Promised Land, he was allowed to see it from the top of Pisgah, and that Joshua was the one who would go with the people and cause them to inherit the land.
Deut. 4 starts with a warning to the Israelites to obey the commandments of God, and especially not to add to or take away from what He had commanded. One word of caution, on this note, is that Christians often point to this verse as one of many warning passages in the Bible against adding to the word of God, and tell Mormons that the BOM is false because it is “adding to the word of God”. That is a bad argument, because Mormons can turn this around on Christians and say that if we take that view, then the “Bible” as we know it should stop with Deuteronomy, because adding Joshua, Judges, the prophets, the Psalms, etc., is “adding to the word” that God had given the Israelites by this time in Deuteronomy. Neither Christians nor Mormons would understand it that way, thus, there are two ways we could understand this: 1) that this prohibition against adding to or taking away from the commands is just that — the Israelites are not to add to or take away from the commands, and this has little or nothing to do with adding to or taking away from the Word of God as such; or 2) that this prohibition against adding to or subtracting from what God has given is only speaking about corrupting God’s Word with man’s invention. If point #1 is correct, then this verse says nothing that could possibly be applied to whether the BOM is Scripture or not, just the same as it doesn’t apply to whether Psalms or Isaiah or the NT is Scripture. If point #2 is correct, then we agree that all that God gives to man as His Scripture and His Word should be considered Scripture, and the argument becomes whether the BOM has come from God or not. In either case, the verse doesn’t really help, so I would avoid using it as an argument over LDS Scripture and whether it’s valid or not.
The chapter continues with more exhortations to cleave to the Word of God, and also mentions the Israelites being at Mt. Horeb receiving the Law. Interestingly, it has Moses saying that God spoke to “you” at that time, 40 years before, when all of the adults to whom God had actually spoken were dead by this point (except Moses, Joshua, and Caleb). It reminds me of Jesus’s statement in the gospels when He said to the people of His day, many centuries after the giving of the Law,
But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
Matt. 22:31-32
That passage was spoken millennia before the time of those people, yet Jesus said that it was spoken unto them. Similarly, what God spoke to the first-generation Israelites at Mt. Sinai was said to have been spoken to the second-generation Israelites, as if they had been there. The chapter continues with exhortations in the strongest terms against idolatry, and includes a warning that if the Israelites (these particular ones or their descendants) go into idolatry, that they will not last long in the Promised Land, but instead will be destroyed and scattered.
Deut. 5 begins Moses’s recitation of the Law to the assembled Israelites. V4 is most interesting in that it says, “The LORD talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire”. I highlight this verse because of the phrase “face to face”. In Deut. 4, in the part against idolatry, Moses belabors the point that the Israelites at Mt. Sinai saw no form or likeness of God (hence they should not make any idols of man, woman, or animal, to claim that that’s God / what God looks like). The fact that they didn’t see God looking like man should in and of itself cause problems with LDSs who believe that God making man “in His image” means that God has a human form, since God specifically did not appear in human form here, and also specifically prohibited the making of idols in human form as if that’s what God looks like. Further, one of the passages that LDSs point to, in claiming that God is a glorified man is earlier in the Pentateuch when it says that God spoke to Moses “face to face”. They say that this means that God has a face like Moses’s face, and that Moses could see God’s face just like God could see Moses’s face — just like two men talking to each other. But in this chapter we see that “face to face” is an idiomatic expression and doesn’t require a literal face, since we are specifically told that God did not appear in human form (thus He had no actual face), when he spoke “face to face” with the people.
The next part of the chapter is a slightly-expanded version of the Ten Commandments. By “slightly expanded”, I mean that there is a little bit more commentary on them, not that there is any great difference between the actual commandments in Exod. 20 and those here.
The rest of the chapter reminds them that after God spoke audibly with the people, the people begged for Moses to be their intermediary, so that they didn’t hear directly from God. I emphasize this because it will come up again in Deut. 18, which is very important in determining the difference between a true prophet and a false one.
For another orthodox Christian view on the Come Follow Me curriculum, visit Mormonism Research Ministry’s article here.
TOYBOM: The One Year Book of Mormon 
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