Deuteronomy 5:1-21 - The Ten Commandments
Notes
5:1–21 The Ten Commandments. As in Exodus 20–24, the Ten Commandments stand at the head of the law given at Sinai (see Ex. 20:1–17). In many respects, the detailed laws of Deuteronomy 12–26 follow the general pattern of the Ten Commandments, suggesting that the Ten Commandments function as a summary of God’s requirements for his people. All but the Sabbath commandment (5:12–15) and the commandment against carved images (vv. 8–10) are explicitly reinforced in the NT.
5:1–11:32 As Moses began his second address to the people of Israel, he reminded them of the events and the basic commands from God that were foundational to the Sinaitic Covenant (5:1–33; see Ex 19:1–20:21). Then, in 6:1–11:32, Moses expounded and applied the first 3 of the Ten Commandments to the present experience of the people.
Finally, it is better to see the changes of person in these verses (1–5) as having a rhetorical purpose than to explain them as a string of afterthoughts and contradictions (contra Mittmann 1975: 132–133). There is a certain symmetry in the progression from the initial ‘I–you’ address (1) through ‘we’ (2–3), to ‘you’ (4), and back to ‘I–you’ (5). And this effectively highlights the important theological issues of the chapter at its outset (the immediacy of the present generation’s responsibility, yet the crucial role of Moses, and hence of the Torah, in its mediation).
5:1 Hear, O Israel often introduces new and important sections; cf. 4:1; 6:4; 9:1; 20:3. Statutes and the rules covers all the ethical teaching of Deuteronomy.
5:1 Hear, O Israel. The verb “hear” carried the sense “obey.” A hearing that leads to obedience was demanded of all the people (cf. 6:4; 9:1; 20:3; 27:9).
5:1 Words preceding the restatement of the Decalogue serve to emphasise the importance and significance of the exposition that follows. Instead of the simple ‘And Moses summoned’ we have ‘And Moses summoned all Israel, and said’. Not only were the people of Israel to listen to the stipulations of the covenant, but they were to order their lives in obedience to them. To be loyal to the covenant the people had to respond to these demands of God. The call by Moses for them to hear, learn, and follow (v. 1) is repeated in essence at the end of the chapter (vv. 32–33). They had bound themselves by a solemn oath to keep these obligations of the King. Significantly, then, the solemn command to follow carefully all requirements of the covenant both precedes and follows the actual Decalogue.
The law as understood in Deuteronomy is not simply prohibition, but precept, a training in right living.
Moses now summons all Israel in order to address them. The verb translated ‘convened’ is the basic word in Hebrew meaning ‘to call’, but it is used in a special sense of convening a covenantal assembly (see 29:1–2; Josh. 23:2).
His opening words, ‘Hear, O Israel’, are used as a formula in Deuteronomy (see 6:5; 9:1; 20:3; cf. 4:1; 6:3); in each case they serve to witness to a solemn statement that is about to follow
Moses gives Israel a three-pronged command: hear, learn and obey. The first verb, ‘hear’, includes the concept of obedience throughout ancient Near-Eastern covenantal documents. The second term, ‘learn’, is a common one in the Hebrew language, yet it appears only in Deuteronomy in the entire Pentateuch. That fact highlights the purpose of the book: it is a covenantal document that is to train Israel in the right way of living.
5:2 The covenant at Horeb (Sinai) anticipates the new covenant, where obedience will spring from the heart (Heb. 8:8–13), because of Christ’s purification (Heb. 10:14).
5:2 a covenant with us at Horeb. The second generation of Israel, while children, received the covenant that God made with Israel at Sinai.
If the role of Yahweh is highlighted in v. 2, the phrase ‘with us’ is also significant, and this is resumed and extended in v. 3. The insistence that this covenant was made ‘not with your fathers’ is surprising in view of what has just been said. The first issue here is the identity of the ‘fathers’. We saw (above) that on the broadest canvas of the book the ‘fathers’ have been specified as the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (see above on 1:8, and T. Römer 2000). These three are also in view in 6:3. An understanding of the ‘fathers’ here as the patriarchs would make sense: though they received the promise, they did not themselves enter into the covenant. However, it seems that the concept is used somewhat flexibly in the book. In some contexts it directs the audience to past generations generally, just as references to ‘your children’ direct it forward. In such cases it belongs to that strand of deuteronomic rhetoric that emphasizes the immediate responsibility of the present generation. This is one of those cases. The force of the command to the present (Moab) generation depends not on a contrast with the patriarchs, to whom the promise was first given, but rather on a contrast with the generation that actually stood at Horeb.
Moses is about to repeat the law of Sinai to Israel in the plains of Moab. Israel is called to swear an oath to the covenant. In ancient Near-Eastern covenants, each new generation must subscribe, or swear to, the covenant. Thus what we are witnessing is a renewal of the covenant between Yahweh and Israel.
Moses says that this covenant was not made with ‘our fathers’. Some authors understand this expression to refer to the immediately preceding generation of Hebrews who, for the most part, died in the wilderness. This is unlikely, however, for whenever that phrase (or ‘your fathers’) is used in Deuteronomy it always refers to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (see, for example, 1:8; 6:23). Does this mean that the Mosaic covenant is a totally different covenant from the one God made with the patriarchs?15 No, not at all. Kline says it well: ‘The patriarchal fathers had died without receiving the promises; but the present generation, with whom the Sinaitic Covenant was established as well as with the older generation that perished in the wilderness, was privileged to see the promised kingdom realized.’
5:3 Not with our fathers … but with us. In reality, the Horeb covenant (Exodus 19–24) was made with the previous generation. However, generations are conflated to make a rhetorical point: the current generation is just as bound by the covenant at Horeb as their parents were. See notes on Deut. 1:20–21 and 1:29–31. See also 4:10; 11:2–9; 29:13–15.
5:3 did not make this covenant with our fathers. The “fathers” were not the people’s immediate fathers, who had died in the wilderness, but their more distant ancestors, the patriarchs (see 4:31, 37; 7:8, 12; 8:18). The Sinaitic or Mosaic Covenant was in addition to and distinct from the Abrahamic Covenant made with the patriarchs.
Calvin thinks that ‘the fathers’ are those who died in Egypt, but it is better to take it as a reference to the patriarchal fathers (cf. 4:31, 37; 7:8, 12; 8:18). They had died without receiving the promises, but the present generation was privileged to approach the promised land and enter it.
The negative ‘not’ is to be taken in a relative sense of ‘not only’. This means that Moses is asserting the continuity of God’s covenantal dealings with his people, just as he had done at the outset of his exposition of the law (1:8). The meaning is therefore ‘not only with our fathers but also with us’. The emphasis falls on the responsibility of the present generation to observe the covenant made not only with their forefathers, but with them also.
But in reality it was not this generation who was at Horeb. How are we to understand that? McConville gets to the heart of the matter when he says, ‘… we have here the clearest expression in Deuteronomy of one of its main contentions, namely, that Israel in all its generations stands in principle once again at Horeb, confronted with the covenant commands as if about to be given for the first time.’
5:4–5 These verses echo Ex 20:18–21 (also Dt 4:12) and are elaborated on in Dt 5:22–31. Face to face is a metaphor for “directly” as opposed to through a mediator. Therefore, v. 5 seems to contradict v. 4. The explanation is in vv. 5:22–31. Although Israel heard the Ten Commandments directly from God, the rest of the law was mediated to them by Moses (J. G. McConville).
5:4 At Sinai the LORD spoke with them ‘face to face’. This must refer to their hearing the voice speaking, for it is expressly said that they saw no likeness or appearance (Deut. 4:15–19). It emphasises the directness with which the LORD gave his revelation, and the solemn and impressive way in which the covenant was inaugurated. To avoid any doubt as to the identity of the speaker there was a visible manifestation of God’s glory in the fire (cf. both the voice and the visible descent of the Spirit at Jesus’ baptism, Luke 3:22). It could only be God’s voice that spoke from the fire.
4–5. The speech of Yahweh to Israel is now recalled. On his speaking ‘from the midst of the fire’ (4) see above on 4:12. Here as in Deut. 4 (and more explicitly than in Exodus, e.g. 20:18) Yahweh is said to have spoken directly to Israel. This is now boldly affirmed by placing Israel ‘face to face’ with Yahweh. The statement is remarkable in view of the OT’s hesitation elsewhere to allow the direct vision of God (see Exod. 33:20), and the concern in Exodus to shroud the presence of God in smoke (Exod. 19:18) and to stress Moses’ mediatorial role. It is the more remarkable because in v. 4 there is a change from the inclusive ‘we’ of vv. 2–3 back to to the second-person (plural) address, so that the encounter with Israel as such is stressed. This then goes further than Exod. 33:11, where Moses’ intimacy with God, in similar terms, is his particular privilege. In fact, it seems to do so quite deliberately.
This intimate vision is curiously undercut in the next verse, however, with its parenthetical reminder that Moses did in fact mediate between Israel and Yahweh, for the reason given in Exodus, namely that Israel feared to hear God directly (Exod. 20:18). Verse 5 appears on the face of it to contradict v. 4, and indeed v. 22 (see below), and a late correction to the thought expressed in those places (Mayes 1979: 166; Mittmann 1975: 132). Two balancing points may be made, however. First, statements of the direct vision of God in the OT are mitigated in other places too (with Exod. 33:11; cf. Exod. 33:17–23; cf. Exod. 24:9–11, followed by 24:12–18). Secondly, Deuteronomy appears to maintain a balance between God’s direct communication of the Decalogue to Israel and the need for Moses’ mediation of the subsequent laws. The same tension appears in 5:22–27, where some explanation is offered (see below on those verses).
Indeed, Yahweh spoke with Israel ‘face to face’ at Horeb. This is not to be taken literally because according to Deuteronomy 4:12 the Hebrews saw no physical form at the mountain. It is an idiom that indicates a great intimacy (see 34:10), and it highlights the fact that God spoke to the people directly from Sinai when he gave them the Ten Commandments.
Mayes, for one, argues that verse 5 is incompatible with verse 4. How could God speak directly to the people and yet at the same time Moses be serving as mediator of his spoken revelation? It is clear in Exodus 20 that a sequence is involved: after God spoke the Decalogue to the people, they ran from the mountain in fear (v. 18). The Hebrews then asked Moses to serve as mediator (vv. 19–21). In verse 6 of the present passage, Moses is quoting to the Hebrews what God had spoken to Israel directly at Sinai.
Verses 4–5, the words of Moses, are addressed to Israel in the second person plural, ‘you’. Verse 6, the words of Yahweh, are spoken to Israel in the second person singular, ‘you’. The entire Decalogue uses the intimate second person singular to underscore the covenantal oneness and corporate solidarity of all Israel.
5:5 you were afraid. See vv. 22–27.
5:6 The Ten Commandments begin with a statement of a preexisting relationship with the Lord (your God) and recognition of his prior action in saving Israel. Obedience to the Ten Commandments and laws in general therefore does not earn the relationship but is a response of faith to God’s grace.
Clearly Deuteronomy 5:6 is not the prologue to the covenant, as this is really Deuteronomy 1:1–5. It makes far better sense to take that verse (5:6) and combine it with the exclusive worship of God in 5:7. The sin of having any other god then becomes all the more pointed, as the opening words of the Decalogue relate to the redeemer God who saved his people from their bondage in Egypt.
Although the generation in the plains of Moab was not at Sinai when the law was first revealed by Yahweh to Israel, that event was, in a sense, contemporary for them. Nelson remarks, ‘It is as though they personally had been liberated from slavery and had themselves stood awestruck at Horeb.’ This passage, more than any other in Deuteronomy, underscores the covenantal oneness of the people of God which transcends time. Every person who is included in the covenant, whether in Old Testament or New Testament times, is directly confronted with the reality of God’s law. It transcends generations.
