Chapter Twenty

Sinai legislation.

Exodus 20:1. And God spoke all these words, saying: According to verse 19 of the present chapter (Exod 20:19), as well as Deut 4:36, “all these words,” namely the Ten Commandments (Deut 4:13), were spoken by the Lord directly to the people themselves. In view of this, the testimony Deut 5:5 must be understood to mean that Moses became the intermediary between God and the people in transmitting His commandments only later (Exod 20:19). At this time, having come down from the mountain (Exod 19:25), he is standing with all the people at its base, not ascending to its summit (Exod 20:21-22). The ministry of Angels, about which Archdeacon Stephen speaks (Acts 7:53), the proclamation of the word (that is, the law) through Angels, which Apostle Paul mentions (Heb 2:2), and the giving of the law through Angels (Gal 3:19) do not indicate that God spoke the commandments through Angels, but rather either that the Lord-Lawgiver descended to Sinai with a multitude of Angels (Deut 33:2) who were present at the pronouncement of the commandments, or that the Old Testament law, taken in its entire body of precepts, and not merely in the sense of the Ten Commandments alone, was given to the Hebrew people through many heralds (“Angels”) of divine revelation.

Exodus 20:2. I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; Exodus 20:3. you shall not have other gods before My face. I am the Lord, God of revelation, of covenant, who manifested Himself as the true God through a whole series of plagues, and the fact of bringing the people out of Egypt (Deut 4:32-35) ought to be your “Most High” – the object of your worship. “The Lord is God, and there is no other beside Him” (Deut 4:4). Therefore, faith in Him is incompatible with the worship of other gods – it excludes it; “you shall not have other gods before My face,” before Me, together with Me (Deut 5:7, 2 Sam 17:35).

Exodus 20:4. You shall not make an idol and no image of anything that is in heaven above, and that is on earth below, and that is in the water below the earth; Exodus 20:5. you shall not bow down to them and you shall not serve them, for I am the Lord, your God, a jealous God, visiting the sin of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation, those who hate Me, Exodus 20:6. and showing mercy to thousands of generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments. By forbidding the worship of pagan gods, the first commandment forbids bowing down to their images, from which they are inseparable. Pagan gods have a sensual character – without external forms, idols they are unthinkable. In view of this, a special prohibition of images of pagan gods would seem superfluous. Consequently, in the second commandment, the subject of prohibition is not the making of images of other gods, but the creation of images of God of revelation, the One Who Is. The occasion for such a prohibition might be that the human inclination toward a visible representation of an invisible God (Deut 4:15) could lead to representing Him in sensual, visible forms and to deifying these latter – idolatry. The Most High ought not to be represented as an idol, a carved image (Hebrew “pesel” (Deut 4:16)) and in other forms or images. The prohibition against making images of the Lord is based on the fact that He is invisible (Deut 4:15), and the prohibition against bowing down and serving them (Exod 20:5) is motivated by the fact that the One Who Is is a jealous God (Deut 4:24, Josh 24:19), that is, zealously guarding rights to worship that belong to Him alone and not permitting that the glory and praise proper to Him be given to idols (Isa 42:8). The motivation for the Hebrews to avoid idol worship stems from the properties of God the “jealous one,” resulting in the inevitability of punishment for the disobedient and mercy for the faithful to Him (Exod 34:7, Num 14:18, Isa 14:21). Jehovah punishes children for the guilt of fathers – not innocent children for the transgressions of ancestors, which is inconsistent with Deut 24:16, Jer 31:30, Ezek 18:1-32, but those children whose own transgression (“those who hate Me”) is rooted in the guilt of their fathers.

Exodus 20:7. Do not pronounce the name of the Lord, your God, in vain, for the Lord will not leave unpunished the one who pronounces His name in vain. Faith in the Lord, a nature evoking a feeling of reverence, awe (Gen 31:42), presupposes respect, reverent attitude also toward His name. This is what the third commandment requires, forbidding profanation – the futile, vain use of the divine name (“in vain” – Hebrew “shav,” – see Jer 2:30).

Exodus 20:8. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy; Exodus 20:9. six days you shall work and do all your work, Exodus 20:10. and the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord, your God: you shall not do any work on it, neither you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor the foreigner who is in your dwellings; Exodus 20:11. for in six days the Lord created heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and on the seventh day He rested; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it. The precept concerning the Sabbath was already known to the Hebrew people (Gen 2:3, Exod 16:23 and others), therefore it is only recalled: “Remember the Sabbath day,” not proclaimed as a new law. Israel must remember the sanctification of the Sabbath (Exod 31:13-14, Lev 19:3, Deut 5:12), that is, its separation from the other days of the week. This separation is expressed in the fact that six of them are devoted to work of various kinds (Exod 31:15, Lev 19:3), while the seventh belongs to the Lord. The first six days are a time of concern for earthly needs, on the seventh day the Hebrew must free himself from immersion in worldly interests, distance himself from attachment to the earth. The means to this is the cessation of all work (Lev 23:3) – gathering of manna (Exod 16:26), preparing food in boiled and baked form (Exod 16:23), sowing and reaping (Exod 34:21), kindling fire (Exod 35:3), gathering wood (Num 15:32), carrying burdens (Jer 17:21), commerce (Amos 8:5), work in oil presses, transporting sheaves and goods (Nehem 13:15). Work is forbidden not only to the Hebrew himself with his family, but even to his slave, foreigner, and cattle. Otherwise, that is, if the slave worked, the Hebrew master’s thoughts would involuntarily turn to his labor, and he would not free himself, consequently, from concerns about earthly matters. The foundation for Sabbath rest is the sanctification of the Sabbath by God Himself (Exod 20:11): the sacred cannot be included by man in the circle of ordinary worldly affairs (Exod 31:16-17). According to the indication of Deut 5:15, the Sabbath is also celebrated in remembrance of the exodus from Egypt. Liberation from slavery was at the same time the choosing of the Hebrews as a people of God, a theocratic people, which inaugurated its beginning. According to the idea of theocracy, Israel ought to serve the Most High. The celebration of the Sabbath – its dedication to God – served as a direct expression of this fundamental idea of the Old Testament theocracy, the idea of the choosing of the Hebrews as a people of God and the service to the Lord flowing from it.

Exodus 20:12. Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long on the land that the Lord, your God, is giving you. The honor of father and mother, obedience to them by children, is a source of well-being and longevity for individual persons (Prov 20:20), entire generations (Jer 35:18-19, Prov 1:8, Sir 3:6-9), and the whole people. Families strong in their moral bonds, faithful to the covenants of their fathers, will not separate themselves (Eccl 4:9-12) and will themselves create a stable, durable society; the breakdown, dissolution of the family is a sign of the imminent destruction of the entire people (Mic 7:6 and others). In view of such significance of the family as the foundation of all civil life, Moses begins his regulation of mutual, social relations with the fifth commandment: a stable family is the guarantee of a stable society. The expression: “that it may be well with you,” which is absent in the Hebrew reading Exod 20:12 but appears in the repetition of this commandment in Deuteronomy (Deut 5:16), is present in both places according to the LXX text.

Exodus 20:13. You shall not murder. The sixth commandment protects the right of man to life. The author of the life of every person is God (Job 10:10-12), and therefore only He alone can take it away.

Exodus 20:14. You shall not commit adultery. By adultery is understood the union of a married man with another man’s wife, a wife who has a husband, and also of a married woman with another man (Lev 20:10, Prov 6:32, Jer 29:23), and even of a betrothed woman with a stranger (Hos 4:13). It is regarded as a violation of the marriage covenant, for which reason the apostasy of the Hebrew people, betrayal of the covenant with God, which is represented under the image of the union of husband and wife (Jer 3:1, Hos 2:4), is called adultery. And since the marriage union is a divine institution, even in the patriarchal period adultery was considered a great evil, a sin before the Lord.

Exodus 20:15. You shall not steal. The eighth commandment protects the property of one’s neighbor. Property is acquired through labor, hard labor (Gen 3:19), which on account of this is valued and respected by the laborer himself. But everyone who values his own labor must also value that of his neighbor (see commentary on chapter 22.

Exodus 20:16. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. The requirement of the eighth commandment is expanded in the ninth. While the first prohibits causing damage to the property of one’s neighbor only, the second is concerned with damage caused to the life, honor, and such of one’s neighbor, both by false testimony before a judge (Deut 19:18) and by slander (Ps 14:2-3, Sir 7:12-13).

Exodus 20:17. You shall not desire the house of your neighbor; you shall not desire the wife of your neighbor, nor his field, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s. From the prohibition of wicked deeds and words, the law proceeds in the tenth commandment to the prohibition of wicked desires and thoughts, which are the source of wicked deeds. In the order of listing the objects on which wicked desires and thoughts are forbidden to be directed, there is a difference between the Hebrew text of the Book of Exodus and Deuteronomy (Deut 5:21). In the first version the commandment begins thus: “You shall not desire the house of your neighbor,” and in the second: “You shall not desire the wife of your friend,” and then: “You shall not desire the house of your neighbor.” Which version is more correct is difficult to say. The transposition of words from one commandment to another is impossible, but a rearrangement within the same one is possible. By “house,” the desire of which is forbidden, we understand most naturally a house not only in the sense of a dwelling, but in the sense of a family and all the possessions of the householder, which are then listed separately as a clarification of the general concept of “house.”

Exodus 20:18. All the people saw the thunders and the flames, and the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and seeing this, the entire people retreated and stood at a distance. Exodus 20:19. And they said to Moses: You speak to us, and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us, lest we die. Fear of being burned by the fire (Deut 5:22) causes the Hebrews to retreat from Sinai. When, because of this, it becomes impossible for them to hear the voice of the Most High directly, the people ask Moses to be an intermediary between them and God. No loss will result from this, so to speak, the Hebrews are saying: listening to the commandments of Jehovah from the lips of Moses, they will keep them (Deut 5:24) as if they heard directly from God Himself.

Exodus 20:20. And Moses said to the people: Do not be afraid; God has come to you to test you and so that the fear of Him will be before your face, that you may not sin. The phenomena evoking a feeling of fear have as their purpose not the death of the people, but the imprinting of the memory of what transpired in the legislation, so that the recollection of it might subsequently restrain the Hebrews from violating the commandments. Fear, evoked by the sight of a terrible manifestation and sustained by recollection of it, will penetrate the whole being of the people and will protect them from attempting to violate the covenant.

Exodus 20:21. And all the people stood at a distance, and Moses drew near into the thick cloud where God was. Since there was no reason to weaken the feeling of fear by commanding them to approach the mountain, the people remained at a distance from it.

Exodus 20:22. And the Lord said to Moses: Thus say to the house of Jacob and declare to the sons of Israel: You have seen how I spoke to you from heaven; Exodus 20:23. You shall not make before Me gods of silver, or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves: Exodus 20:24. Make an altar of earth for Me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen; on every place where I will put the remembrance of My name, I will come to you and will bless you; Exodus 20:25. and if you make an altar of stone for Me, do not build it of hewn stone, for if you lift up a tool on it, you will profane it; Exodus 20:26. and you shall not go up by steps to My altar, so that your nakedness will not be exposed at it. From this verse begins the exposition of the laws proclaimed on Sinai to Moses alone and subsequently transmitted by him to all the people. These laws are referred to in the words Deut 5:5. The first of such statutes is the statute concerning the place of worship – the altar. Since the altar is intended for God (Exod 20:24-25), it must be constructed in the spirit of true worship, and must not bear any trace of paganism. And first of all, on it or near it there cannot be statues – golden and silver idols, inconsistent with faith in the one true God. In view of this, the second commandment is repeated, with indication of the reason for the prohibition of making an idol: the invisibility of God – “I spoke to you from heaven” (Deut 4:36, Nehem 9:13). Since the Hebrews might then, imitating the pagans, make images on the stones of the altar and bow down to them (Lev 26:1), the law requires, to prevent this, that the altar be made of earth, or if of stone, then necessarily of unhewn stone (Deut 27:5 and others, Josh 8:31, 1 Macc 4:47), since on them it is more difficult to carve one or another image. In view of the temporary absence of one definite place for the performance of worship (Deut 12:5) the altar can be erected where “the Lord will put the remembrance of His name” (Exod 20:24), that is, where He will manifest His presence. Only then will the sacrifice offered on the altar be pleasing to God. And finally, just as sacrifice covers the sins of man, so also nakedness, which reminds of sin, must be hidden: at the altar there must be no steps, ascending which would lead to the exposure of nakedness. * * * Notes “Every form”: Hebrew “ve-kol-temuna,” temuna – form, appearance (Deut 4:15, Job 4:16), being reproductions of the heavenly bodies (“in heaven above”), people, cattle, birds, creeping things (“on earth below”) and fish (“in the water below the earth”) (Deut 4:16-19). 1 Sam 9:3, – when the Hebrews settled in Canaan the law of Deuteronomy on the unity of the place of worship acquired full force, cited places.