Deuteronomy 5 — TOE

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5And Mosheh called all Israel, and said to them: Listen, Israel, to the statutes and judgments which I speak before you this day, and learn them, and keep them to do them.^{Verse 2}The Lord our God confirmed a covenant with us at Horeb.^{Verse 3}The Lord confirmed not this covenant with our fathers, but with us who are here all of us living this day:^{Verse 4}Word with word hath the Lord spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire,^{Verse 5}(I stood between the Word of the Lord and you, to announce to you at that time the word of the Lord; for you were afraid in presence of the fire, and went not up to the mountain,) saying:^{Verse 6}I am the Lord thy God, who hath brought thee out of the land of Mizraim, from the house of bondage.^{Verse 7}There shall not be with thee another god beside Me.^{Verse 8}Thou shalt not make to thee an image or any likeness of that which is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth;^{Verse 9}Thou shalt not worship them or serve them: for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the guilt of fathers upon rebellious children, upon the third generation and upon the fourth of them that hate Me, when the children complete the sins of their fathers;^{Verse 10}But doing good unto (thousands of) generations of those who love Me, and keep My commandments.^{Verse 11}Thou shalt not swear by the Name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not acquit him who shall swear by His Name falsely.^{Verse 12}Keep the day of Shabbatha to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.^{Verse 13}Six days thou shalt work, and do all thy labour;^{Verse 14}But the seventh day is the Sabbath before the Lord thy God: thou shalt not perform any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy servant, thy handmaid, thy ox, thy ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy sojourner who is in thy gates; that thy servant and handmaid may rest as well as thou.^{Verse 15}And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Mizraim, and that the Lord brought thee out from thence with a mighty hand and uplifted arm; therefore the Lord thy God hath commanded thee to observe the Sabbath day.^{Verse 16}Honour thy father and mother, as the Lord hath commanded, that thou mayest prolong thy days, and it may be well with thee in the land which the Lord thy God shall give thee.^{Verse 17}Thou shalt not kill life, nor commit adultery, nor steal, nor bear false witness against thy neighbour.^{Verse 18}Nor shalt thou desire thy neighbour’s wife, nor covet thy neighbour’s house, his field, or his servant, or his handmaid, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbour’s.^{Verse 19}These words spake the Lord with all your congregation at the mount, from the midst of the fire, the clouds and the darkness, with a great voice, and hath not ceased. And He wrote them upon two tables of stone, and gave them to me.^{Verse 20}But it was, when you heard the voice from the midst of the fire and darkness, the mount burning with fire, all the chiefs of your tribes and your elders drew near to me.^{Verse 21}And you said, Behold, the Lord our God hath showed to us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard the voice of His Word out of the midst of the fire; this day have we seen that the Lord speaketh with a man, and he liveth.^{Verse 22}But now why should we die? For this great fire will consume us: if we go on to hear the voice of the Word of the Lord our God, we shall die.^{Verse 23}For who is there of all flesh who can hear the voice of the Word of the Living God speaking from the midst of fire (in the manner) that we have, and can live?^{Verse 24}Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say, and speak thou with us all that the Lord our God shall speak with thee, and we will hearken and will do.^{Verse 25}And the voice of your words was heard before the Lord when you spake with me, and the Lord said to me, The voice of the words of this people which they have spoken with thee is heard before Me; all (the words) they have spoken are right.^{Verse 26}O that they may have such a heart to fear Me and keep all My commandments all days, that it may be well with them and their children forever.^{Verse 27}Go, and say to them, Return to your tents.^{Verse 28}31 But thou, stand here before Me, and I will tell thee all the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which thou shalt teach them, that they may do them in the land that I will give them to possess it.^{Verse 29}32 And you shall observe to do as the Lord your God hath commanded you, nor decline to the right hand or to the left.^{Verse 30}33 In all the way which the Lord your God hath commanded you shall ye walk, that you may live, and it may be well with you, and you may lengthen out your days in the land which you are to inherit.

Commentary

Introduction

A. The True Essence of the Law and Its Fulfilment
The exposition of the law commences with a repetition of the ten words of the covenant, which were spoken to all Israel directly by the Lord Himself.

Deu 5:1-5 form the introduction, and point out the importance and great significance of the exposition which follows. Hence, instead of the simple sentence "And Moses said," we have the more formal statement "And Moses called all Israel, and said to them." The great significance of the laws and rights about to be set before them, consisted in the fact that they contained the covenant of Jehovah with Israel. Deu 5:2-3 "Jehovah our God made a covenant with us in Horeb; not with our fathers, but with ourselves, who are all of us here alive this day." The "fathers" are neither those who died in the wilderness, as Augustine supposed, nor the forefathers in Egypt, as Calvin imagined; but the patriarchs, as in Deu 4:37. Moses refers to the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, which was essentially distinct from the covenant at Sinai, which was essentially distinct from the covenant made with Abraham (Gen 15:18), though the latter laid the foundation for the Sinaitic covenant. But Moses passed over this, as it was not his intention to trace the historical development of the covenant relation, but simply to impress upon the hearts of the existing generation the significance of its entrance into covenant with the Lord. The generation, it is true, with which God made the covenant at Horeb, had all died out by that time, with the exception of Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, and only lived in the children, who, though in part born in Egypt, were all under twenty years of age at the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, and therefore were not among the persons with whom the Lord concluded the covenant. But the covenant was made not with the particular individuals who were then alive, but rather with the nation as an organic whole. Hence Moses could with perfect justice identify those who constituted the nation at that time, with those who had entered into covenant with the Lord at Sinai. The separate pronoun (we) is added to the pronominal suffix for the sake of emphasis, just as in Gen 4:26, etc.; and אלּה again is so connected with אנחנוּ, as to include the relative in itself. Deu 5:4-5 "Jehovah talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire," i.e., He came as near to you as one person to another. בּפנים פּנים is not perfectly synonymous with פּנים אל פּנים, which is used in Exo 33:11 with reference to God's speaking to Moses (cf. Deu 34:10, and Gen 32:31), and expresses the very confidential relation in which the Lord spoke to Moses as one friend to another; whereas the former simply denotes the directness with which Jehovah spoke to the people. - Before repeating the ten words which the Lord addressed directly to the people, Moses introduces the following remark in Deu 5:5 - "I stood between Jehovah and you at that time, to announce to you the word of Jehovah; because ye were afraid of the fire, and went not up into the mount" - for the purpose of showing the mediatorial position which he occupied between the Lord and the people, not so much at the proclamation of the ten words of the covenant, as in connection with the conclusion of the covenant generally, which alone in fact rendered the conclusion of the covenant possible at all, on account of the alarm of the people at the awful manifestation of the majesty of the Lord. The word of Jehovah, which Moses as mediator had to announce to the people, had reference not to the instructions which preceded the promulgation of the decalogue (Exo 19:11.), but, as is evident from Deu 5:22-31, primarily to the further communications which the Lord was about to address to the nation in connection with the conclusion of the covenant, besides the ten words (viz., Exo 20:18; 22:1-23:33), to which in fact the whole of the Sinaitic legislation really belongs, as being the further development of the covenant laws. The alarm of the people at the fire is more fully described in Deu 5:25. The word "saying" at the end of Deu 5:5 is dependent upon the word "talked" in Deu 5:4; Deu 5:5 simply containing a parenthetical remark.

In vv. 6-21, the ten covenant words are repeated from Ex 20, with only a few variations, which have already been discussed in connection with the exposition of the decalogue at Exo 20:1-14. - In Deu 5:22-33, Moses expounds still further the short account in Exo 20:18-21, viz., that after the people had heard the ten covenant words, in their alarm at the awful phenomena in which the Lord revealed His glory, they entreated him to stand between as mediator, that God Himself might not speak to them any further, and that they might not die, and then promised that they would hearken to all that the Lord should speak to him (Exo 20:23 -31). His purpose in doing so was to link on the exhortation in vv. 32, 33, to keep all the commandments of the Lord and do them, which paves the way for passing to the exposition of the law which follows. "A great voice" (Exo 20:22) is an adverbial accusative, signifying "with a great voice" (cf. Ges. 118, 3). "And He added no more:" as in Num 11:25. God spoken the ten words directly to the people, and then no more; i.e., everything further He addressed to Moses alone, and through his mediation to the people. As mediator He gave him the two tables of stone, upon which He had written the decalogue (cf. Exo 31:18). This statement somewhat forestalls the historical course; and in Deu 9:10-11, it is repeated again in its proper historical connection.

Deu 5:24-27 contain a rhetorical, and at the same time really a more exact, account of the events described in Exo 20:18-20 (15-17). ואתּ (Deu 5:24), a contraction of ואתּה, as in Num 11:15 (cf. Ewald, 184, a.). Jehovah's reply to the words of the people (Deu 5:28-31) is passed over in Ex 20. God approved of what the people said, because it sprang from a consciousness of the unworthiness of any sinner to come into the presence of the holy God; and He added, "Would that there were always this heart in them to fear Me," i.e., would that they were always of the same mind to fear Me and keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and their children for ever. He then directed the people to return to their tents, and appointed Moses as the mediator, to whom He would address all the law, that he might teach it to the people (cf. Deu 4:5). Having been thus entreated by the people to take the office of mediator, and appointed to that office by the Lord, Moses could very well bring his account of these events to a close (Deu 5:32, Deu 5:33), by exhorting them to observe carefully all the commandments of the Lord, and not to turn aside to the right hand or to the left, i.e., not to depart in any way from the mode of life pointed out in the commandments (cf. Deu 17:11, Deu 17:20; Deu 28:14; Jos 1:7, etc.), that it might be well with them, etc. (cf. Deu 4:40). וטוב, perfect with ו rel. instead of the imperfect.

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