Matthew Henry on Deuteronomy 5:23–end
Here, I. Moses reminds them of the agreement of both the parties that were now treating, in the mediation of Moses.
1. Here is the consternation that the people were put into by that extreme terror with which the law was given. They owned that they could not bear it any more: "This great fire will consume us; this dreadful voice will be fatal to us; we shall certainly die if we hear it any more," Deu 5:25. They wondered that they were not already struck dead with it, and took it for an extraordinary instance of the divine power and goodness, not only that they were thus spoken to, but that they were enabled to bear it. For who ever heard the voice of the living God, as we have, and lived? Go…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Deuteronomy 5:23
And . . . ye came near unto me--(See on Exo 20:19).
John Gill on Deuteronomy 5:23
And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness,.... The thick darkness, where God was, and with which the mountain was covered, Exodus 20:21.
for the mountain did burn with fire; which is a reason both why the Lord spoke out of the midst of the fire, the mountain on which he descended burning with it and also for his speaking out of the midst of darkness, because not only a thick cloud covered the mountain, but it was altogether on a smoke, which ascended as the smoke of a furnace, Exodus 19:16.
that ye come near unto me, even all the heads of your tribes and your elders; or wise men, as the Targum of Jonathan; by which it appears, that not only the common pe…
Read the whole note in the consoleJohn Calvin on Deuteronomy 5:22-31
Deuteronomy 5:22-31
22. These words the Lord spoke unto all your assembly in the mount, out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice; and he added no more: and he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.
22. Verba haec loquutus est Jehova ad cunctam congregationem vestram in monte e medio ignis nubis et caliginis, voce magna, et non addidit: scripsitque illa in duabus tabulis lapideis, et dedit ills mihi.
23. And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, (for the mountain did burn with fire,) that ye came near unto me, even all the heads of your tribes, and your elders;
23. Fuit autem quu…
