Matthew Henry on Deuteronomy 4:1-40
This most lively and excellent discourse is so entire, and the particulars of it are so often repeated, that we must take it altogether in the exposition of it, and endeavour to digest it into proper heads, for we cannot divide it into paragraphs.
I. In general, it is the use and application of the foregoing history; it comes in by way of inference from it: Now therefore harken, O Israel, Deu 4:1. This use we should make of the review of God's providences concerning us, we should by them be quickened and engaged to duty and obedience. The histories of the years of ancient times should in like manner be improved by us.
II. The scope and drift of his discourse is to persuade them to keep close…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Deuteronomy 4:10
the day that thou stoodest before the Lord . . . in Horeb--The delivery of the law from Sinai was an era never to be forgotten in the history of Israel. Some of those whom Moses was addressing had been present, though very young; while the rest were federally represented by their parents, who in their name and for their interest entered into the national covenant.
John Gill on Deuteronomy 4:11
And ye came near and stood under the mountain,.... At the foot of it, in the lower part of the mountain, as the Targum of Jonathan, and agrees with Exodus 19:17.
and the mountain burnt with fire unto the midst of heaven; the flame and smoke went up into the middle of the air: with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness; which thick darkness was occasioned partly by the smoke, which went up like the smoke of a furnace, and partly by the thick clouds, which were on the mount, and covered the face of the heavens, which were black and tempestuous with them; the Septuagint renders it a "tempest", Exodus 19:18, which denotes the obscurity of the law, and the terrors it works in the minds of men.
John Calvin on Deuteronomy 4:3-11
Deuteronomy 4:3, 4
3. Your eyes have scen what the Lord did because of Baal-peor: for all the men that followed Baal-peor, the Lord thy God hath destroyed them from among you.
3. Oculi vestri viderunt qum fecit Jehova propter Baal-Peor, omnem enim hominem qui perrexerat post Baal-Peor perdidit Jehova Deus tuus e medio tui.
4. But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God ave alive every one of you this day.
4. Vos autem qui adhaesistis Jehova Deo vestro vivitis universi hodie.
3. Your eyes have seen what the Lord did. This enlargement more clearly shews that so conspicuous was the example given in the punishment, that it could not be hidden from even the most ignorant; for Moses does n…
