Freedom Receives Its Covenant Shape

“Hear, O Israel” opens four addresses in the book: here, 6:4, 9:1 and 20:3. “In your ears” means aloud and directly, the whole assembly within earshot. “Learn” is lamad once more; the law is not only to be obeyed but studied.

One line, and it states the fact the rest of the chapter explains. Deuteronomy knows two covenants: this one at Horeb and a second made in the land of Moab, which 29:1 says was “beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb”.

The Hebrew stacks its pronouns: with us, we, these, here, today, all of us, alive. The pressure is deliberate, because by 2:14-16 every fighting man who stood at Horeb had died. Many of these listeners were children or not yet born, and Moses tells them the covenant was made with them.

Face in face, panim befanim, is the Hebrew phrase. When Deuteronomy later describes Moses’ own unique knowledge of God (34:10), and when Exodus 33:11 does, the phrase is panim el panim, face to face. The book keeps the two slightly apart: the people met God directly, Moses closely.

A long parenthesis interrupts the sentence, and “saying” at the end picks the thread back up from 5:4. Exodus 19:12 had already fenced the mountain so that no one could touch it; Deuteronomy gives the people’s own fear as the reason they stayed below.

“Thee” is singular throughout the commandments, addressed to each Israelite rather than the crowd. “House of bondage” is literally house of slaves, Egypt as a slave barracks. Jewish tradition counts this line as the first word; most Christian numberings treat it as the preface.

“Before me” is literally upon my face, or in my presence. It can mean beside me, or in defiance of me, and both senses are in play. The command does not argue that other gods do not exist; 4:35 and 4:39 make that claim separately.

Exodus 20:4 reads “any graven image, or any likeness”, joined by and. Deuteronomy’s Hebrew drops the conjunction, so it reads a carved image of any form: the image and the form are one thing. The word for likeness is temunah, the form 4:12 said the people never saw.

“Visiting” is paqad, to attend to, inspect or call to account. Three or four generations is roughly what one household can hold at once; Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation (Genesis 50:23). In court, 24:16 forbids putting children to death for their fathers.

Mercy is chesed, the loyal love that keeps a covenant. “Thousands” probably means thousands of generations, as 7:9 spells out: “to a thousand generations”. Set against three or four in 5:9, the numbers are deliberately lopsided.

“Take” is nasa, to lift or carry: to lift the name onto the lips, as in an oath. “In vain” is lashshav, emptily or falsely. “Hold him guiltless” is the legal verb naqah, to acquit. Like the command against images, it carries its own warning.

Exodus 20:8 says “Remember”; Deuteronomy says “Keep”, shamor, guard. The Talmud (Shevuot 20b) held that both words were spoken in a single utterance, and the Friday evening hymn Lekhah Dodi sings it. “As the LORD thy God hath commanded thee” is new here, pointing back to Horeb.

“Labour” is avad, the verb of serving, and “work” is melakhah, the word used of God finishing the work of creation (Genesis 2:2) and of the craftsmen’s work on the tabernacle. Six days of labour is commanded as well as the rest, not merely permitted.

Exodus 20:10 names only “thy cattle”; Deuteronomy adds the ox and the ass, the two working animals of a farm. “As well as thou” is kamokha, like you, the word in Leviticus 19:18, “love thy neighbour as thyself”. “Within thy gates” means in your towns.

“Remember” has moved here, out of the command itself. The word for servant is eved, the same word as manservant in 5:14: the Israelite is told he was what his own servant is now. The phrase returns as the reason for several later laws (15:15, 16:12, 24:18, 24:22).

Two phrases are absent from Exodus 20:12: “as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee” and “that it may go well with thee”. Paul quotes the fuller form in Ephesians 6:2-3. “Honour” is kabbed, from kaved, heavy: to give weight to a father and mother.

The verb is ratsach, the word behind “slayer” in the refuge law of 4:42. It covers murder and manslaughter within the community, not killing in war or the court’s sentence of death, which use other words. Jesus quotes the line in Matthew 5:21.

In Deuteronomy the last five commandments are joined by “and”, which the King James renders “Neither”; Exodus 20 sets them down without conjunctions. Adultery, na’af, is in Hebrew law intercourse with a woman married or betrothed to another man (22:22-24).

Two words in Hebrew, lo tignov. The rabbis read the commandment as the stealing of a person, kidnapping, which carries the death penalty in 24:7, and left ordinary theft to other laws (Sanhedrin 86a). That is their reading; the wording itself names no object.

Exodus 20:16 has ed shaqer, a lying witness. Deuteronomy has ed shav, the word translated “in vain” in 5:11. Testimony was given under oath, so false witness is a misuse of the name as well as a lie. “Bear” is the verb for answering in court.

Deuteronomy uses two verbs: “desire” for the wife, from avah, to crave, and “covet”, chamad, for the property. Exodus uses chamad for both. Because the wife now stands apart with her own verb, Catholic and Lutheran numbering divide this verse into a ninth and a tenth commandment.

“He added no more” is contested. Targum Onkelos renders it “and did not cease”, a voice that went on sounding; most read it as a closed list. “Great voice” is qol gadol. The tablets pass into Moses’ hands, a detail that sets up their breaking in 9:17.

The voice is now said to come from the darkness, not only from the fire, and the fire becomes a parenthesis. The heads of the tribes and the elders come forward as representatives. Exodus 20:18 has the people standing afar off.

The elders concede in so many words what 4:33 asked: God talks with a human being, and he lives. “Glory” is kavod, weight, from the same root as “honour” in 5:16. Greatness, godel, is the word Moses used in his own prayer at 3:24.

Their logic is careful: surviving once proves nothing about the next time. “Consume” is the verb of 4:24, a consuming fire, literally an eating fire. “Now therefore” is the same turn Moses used in 4:1, here in the mouth of the frightened.

“The living God” is a rare phrase. David uses it of the armies Goliath defies (1 Samuel 17:26), and Joshua when the Jordan parts (Joshua 3:10). Set against “all flesh”, it puts mortal human beings beside a God who lives in himself.

“We will hear it, and do it” recalls Exodus 24:7, “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient”, where the Hebrew puts doing before hearing. Here the order is the natural one. The emphatic “thou” twice puts the whole weight on Moses.

“They have well said” is the verb God repeats in 18:17, “They have well spoken”, when Deuteronomy recalls this very day and promises a prophet like Moses (18:15-18). The office of prophet grows out of the people’s request at Horeb.

“O that there were” is mi yitten, literally who will give, the Hebrew idiom for a wish, and here God is the one wishing. 29:4 answers it bleakly: “the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive”. Only 30:6 promises God will give it himself.

The shortest command in the chapter sends the people home. Exodus 19:15 had told them to keep apart from their wives while they prepared; the rabbis read the return to tents as ending that restriction. That is their reading, drawn from the earlier verse.

“Stand thou here by me” is literally stand with me, the posture of a servant before a king. “All the commandments” is singular in Hebrew, hammitsvah, the commandment, a collective name for everything Moses will teach, and 6:1 takes up the same singular.

Not turning to right or left is road language. Israel used exactly these words as a traveller to Sihon in 2:27, promising to keep to the highway. The book applies them to the king (17:20) and to the whole people (28:14), and God repeats them to Joshua (Joshua 1:7).

“Walk in all the ways” is the root halakh, from which later Jewish tradition named its law halakhah, the way one walks. Three results are stacked at the end, life, wellbeing and length of days, the same trio 4:40 promised.