Bible Commentaries

REPETITION AND EXPOSITION OF THE LAW.

1. Moses called all Israel — The nation is addressed as present, it being represented by its tribal chieftains.

Hear, O Israel — An impressive commencement, more emphatic than the usual way of beginning a discourse.

2. The Lord… made a covenant with us — It was to be impressed upon the Israelites that Jehovah their God had made a covenant with them. And here, just on the boundary line of the land promised to the seed of Abraham, they are to go back in thought to Sinai, with its awful splendour.

3. Not… with our fathers — Not with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the covenant of which Moses speaks made, but with their descendants who came up out of the land of bondage. A covenant had been made with their fathers, but this covenant was made at Sinai, and, though nearly forty years had passed, there were those among the hearers who could recall the scenes connected with its announcement.

4. The Lord talked — Jehovah, in person, addressed the “ten words,” or commandments, to the people. Other precepts were given through Moses.

5. I stood between the Lord and you — This verse is parenthetical, and properly so marked in our version. It seems to have been introduced to remind the hearers of those startling divine manifestations at Sinai which had alarmed them.

REPETITION OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, Deuteronomy 5:6-21.

Here, on the plains of Moab, in sight of the Land of Promise, thirty-eight years after the first announcement of the law on Sinai, Moses repeats the code which Jehovah had given for the moral guidance of his people. There are variations in language, but not such as to change the meaning of a single commandment. We may suppose that in Exodus we have an exact copy of the law as written on the tables of stone. Here the substance is given in an address, so that we are not to expect exact verbal agreement. Comp. notes on Exodus 20.

12-15. In Exodus 20:11, there is reference to creation in connexion with the requirement for the observance of the Sabbath. In this passage the deliverance from bondage in Egypt seems to be mentioned as the occasion for the grateful remembrance of Jehovah in keeping the Sabbath. When Moses, in Exodus 20:11, says God blessed the Sabbath, because he rested on that day, he does not conflict with the statement here, that he commanded Israel to keep it for a special reason.

16. Honour thy father and thy mother — In the parallel passage in Exodus, long life is promised for obedience to the commandment. The addition in this place of the words that it may go well with thee can only be considered an amplification of the promise.

18. Neither — The Hebrew and not. All the commandments that follow, as well as this, commence with the conjunction and the negative.

22. He added no more — No more to the people; but he said more to Moses, which he was to repeat to the people.

23-33. The Lord… hath showed us his glory — The entire passage gives a more detailed account of the events related in Exodus 20:18-21. Jehovah’s answer to the prayer of the people, which is omitted in Exodus, is here given, that Moses may remind them that it was at their request he became for them spokesman with God.

29. Oh that there were such a heart — In the Hebrew the words are very emphatic — Who will give that their heart may be this to them. “Here the Christian fathers recognised a prophetic declaration of the doctrine of justification through faith working by love produced by God’s grace writing the law on the fleshly tables of the heart. 2 Corinthians 3:3.” — Wordsworth.

31. The statutes, and the judgments — These are the commands recorded in Exodus 21, 22. Note on Deuteronomy 5:6-21. The variations between the commandments as given in this passage and in Exodus 20:1-17, are in the forth, fifth, and tenth. For the sake of comparison we place these commandments side by side:

Ewald’s view is that the ten words were originally each in the same terse form in which the first, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth appear both in Exodus and Deuteronomy. See Speaker’s Commentary on Exodus 20.