Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Deuteronomy 5:31
But as for thee, stand thou here by me, and I will speak unto thee all the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which thou shalt teach them, that they may do [them] in the land which I give them to possess it.
31. Moses is commanded to stand by God in order to receive other laws (than the Ten Words) to teach the people subsequently.
all the commandment ] or charge; Heb. miwah. ‘ “The (or this) commandment “recurs Deu 6:1, Deu 7:11, Deu 30:11; with “all,” Deu 6:25, Deu 8:1, Deu 9:8; Deu 9:22, Deu 15:5, Deu 19:9, Deu 27:1 (of a special injunction), Deu 31:5. As Deu 11:22, Deu 19:9 show, it denotes the deuteronomic legislation generally (esp. on its moral and religious side) viewed as the expression of a single principle, the fundamental duty of Deu 6:5 ’ (Driver); yet it is also possible to interpret it here, as in Deu 11:22, Deu 19:9, of the principles underlying the laws and expounded in this discourse. See below on Deu 6:1.
the statutes, and the judgements ] With Sam. omit the preceding and. The statutes and judgements (the usual deuteronomic phrase) are thus the contents or detailed applications o (the miwah, the separate laws to be subsequently given in Moab on the eve of the people’s entrance to the promised land (as the rest of the verse declares), and which are contained in chs. 12 26.
the land which I give them ] Rather, am about to give them. So without addition Deu 4:1, Deu 11:17, in the Pl. address, and Deu 15:7, Deu 18:9, Deu 26:2, Deu 27:2-3, Deu 28:8; Deu 28:52, all passages in the Sg. address. With the addition to possess it as here, Deu 3:18 ( hath given), Pl.; Deu 9:6, Deu 12:1, Deu 17:14 ( shalt possess), Deu 19:14, all Sg. (except perhaps Deu 12:1, which is doubtful). With the addition for an inheritance, Deu 4:21, Deu 15:4 (+ to possess it), Deu 19:10, Deu 24:4, Deu 25:19, Deu 26:1, all Sg. Cp. Deu 12:10 causeth you, Deu 19:3 causeth thee, to inherit.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
But as for thee, stand thou here by me,…. On the mount by him whither he was called up; Moses was not permitted to go to his tent when the children of Israel were, but was ordered to wait upon the Lord to receive instructions from him, which he was to communicate to the people, being a kind of a mediator between God and them, as they requested, and which was granted them:
and I will speak unto thee all the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments: all laws, moral, ceremonial, and judicial, which belong to them as men, as in a church state, and members of a body politic:
which thou shalt teach them, that they may do them; for all doctrine is in order to practice, without which all instructions, and theoretical notions, signify little: and these they were more especially to do, and some of them peculiarly,
in the land which I give them to possess it: the land of Canaan, and which laid on them no small obligation to do the commandments of God; since of his free favour and good will, and as a pure gift of his, he had bestowed upon them a land flowing with milk and honey, into which he was just now about to bring them; as nothing can more strongly engage souls to a cheerful obedience to the service of God, whether in private or in public, than the consideration of the great and good things which God of his rich grace bestows upon them, and has promised to them, and prepared for them, and will quickly put them into the possession of; and upon such an account Moses presses the observance of the commands of God in the following verses.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
31. The statutes, and the judgments These are the commands recorded in Exodus 21, 22. Note on Deu 5:6-21. The variations between the commandments as given in this passage and in Exo 20:1-17, are in the forth, fifth, and tenth. For the sake of comparison we place these commandments side by side:
Exo 20:8-11.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Loud thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant: nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. Deu 5:12-15. Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee. Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day. Exo 20:12. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. Deu 5:16. Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. Exo 20:17. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s. Deu 5:21. Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour’s wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour’s. Ewald’s view is that the ten words were originally each in the same terse form in which the first, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth appear both in Exodus and Deuteronomy. See Speaker’s Commentary on Exodus 20.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Beholding Moses, in this instance, as he really was, the type and figure of JESUS; and what a refreshing thought is it to the mind of the believer! Yes, Reader! there ever was, and is, and ever will be, One With the FATHER whom he heareth alway. Give him my soul thy cause, and fear not the final issue.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
XXII
THE DECALOGUE THE TENTH COMMANDMENT
Exo 20:17
1. Distinguish this Tenth Commandment from the preceding nine.
Ans. It is so distinguished from all the others in the following particulars: (1) In form; they prohibit the overt act, this the very desire to act. (2) It is the root, or base, of all the second table of the law, all that part of the law that relates to our fellow man. (3) Through violation of this commandments one may violate all of the preceding ones. Thus there are three distinguishing characteristics of the Tenth Commandment.
2. Next, give an analysis of this commandment.
Ans. (1) I ask your very particular attention to the word “covet,” which means desire; whether a good thing or a bad thing, it means to desire, e.g., “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.” . . . “Covet the best gifts,” Paul says in the New Testament.
(2) As man from the constitution of his being must desire and may desire good and lawful things this commandment does not forbid to covet) but only forbids to covet what is thy neighbor’s; the emphatic words are “thy neighbour’s” that is, what belongs to somebody else.
(3) It is sweeping, however, in forbidding to covet anything that is thy neighbor’s, whether wife, home, domestic servants, or domestic animals; indeed all personal and real estate that belongs to his neighbor.
(4) As man from God’s original commission may marry and acquire property, this does not forbid marriage, but it does forbid one coveting his neighbor’s wife; nor does it forbid the individual ownership of land, houses, servants, domestic animals, and other property. On the contrary it is based upon the assertion of the neighbor’s right to own these things. This commandment could not exist at all if your neighbor did not have a right to his own wife, to his own home, his own servants, his own cattle, and his own lands. It does not forbid ownership; it assumes ownership. There must be ownership before this command could come in at all. It permits our lawful desire for marriage, home, and property but forbids to look toward our neighbor’s property in any of these things. Here you see it is a great mistake to say that this commandment forbids acquisitiveness or the accumulation of property. It does neither the one nor the other.
(5) As it forbids even to desire what is another’s, so it forbids all unrighteous methods and means of attaining our desires in these matters. Now, if I know how to analyze a proposition, that is the analysis of that proposition.
3. What are the limitations?
Ans. These define or bound a man’s lawful desire for a wife) property, and the accumulation of property of every kind:
(1) We must not so desire property or so accumulate it as to invade God’s paramount right. Therefore, my ownership is not an absolute ownership, but it stands good against my neighbor; so far as he is concerned it is my own, but as far as God is concerned, I am only his steward.
(2) He must not so desire property or so accumulate wealth aa to harm himself. When this desire and the means of its attainment bring about harm to the man’s body, or to his soul, or hereafter, he has stepped over the bound.
(3) This relates to only one of the items in the commandments. It says, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.” So a limitation here is that he must not invade the rights of his wife. Suppose a man already has a wife, and desires another wife; it violates the rights of’ the wife he has.
(4) He must not so desire to accumulate property as to harm his neighbor; the acquisition must not be done at the expense of the neighbor. He has a right to a piece of land, but he has no right to covet his neighbor’s piece of land.
(5) He must not harm society in any of its organized forms. God made man social, and society is spoken ‘of as an organism, each one of them is a member of the body, and whatever harms one will harm all.
Now, besides these five limitations there is not another limit to what a man may desire and what he may acquire. If he does not get over on to God’s property, if he does not hurt himself, if he does not invade the rights of his wife, if he does not harm his neighbor, and if he does not harm society, then God has put within him the desire for ownership, and God requires him to push that ownership to accumulate property. In other words, his desires for accumulations become unlawful when they deny God’s paramount ownership; when they harm himself in body or soul, in time or in eternity; when they lead him to have more than one wife at a time, or to despise that one wife’s rights; when he acquires his property, or uses his property rights to harm society, its health, purity, or morals. I said that this commandment is such alone that a violation of it may lead to a violation of the whole Decalogue. So my next question is,
4. What scripture proves that?
Ans. In 1Ti 6:10 , Paul says, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,” not, “money is a root of all kinds of evil,” but the love of it. Money is harmless in itself. But that inordinate desire for money, which is out of proportion with reference to our relations to God, ourselves, our families, our fellow men, and society, that is a root of every kind of evil that can come under the whole Ten Words of the Law.
5. Furnish an illustration of each one of the Ten Commandments, i.e., how the violation of this commandment, or how this inordinate love of property may make a person violate every one of the other nine.
Ans. (1) Suppose you take the First Commandment. I want to read a passage on that from Job 31:24 : “If I have made gold my hope, and have said to the fine gold, thou art my confidence; if I have rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because my hand had gotten much . . . [Job 31:28 ] this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judges; for I should have denied the God that is above.” In other words, the First Commandment is: “Thou shalt have no other gods beside me.” If I substitute, for the one only true God, gold and silver and say, “Thou art my confidence and my hope,” that is a violation of the First Commandment, as it is twice expressed in the New Testament, Mat 6:24 , and Luk 16:13 : “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Here mammon is put up as a rival deity and the express declaration is that one cannot serve both of them. Therefore the First Commandment is violated by an inordinate desire for money.
(2) We take the second. In Eph 5:3-5 , and in Col 3:5 , it is said that covetousness is idolatry, a worship of images. The Second Commandment says, “Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven images to bow down thyself to them, nor to worship them; for I, Jehovah, thy God, am a jealous God.” This kind of covetousness is illustrated in the case of the miser, who gathers his treasure from his secret box and pours out the glittering gold. He looks at it shining, and lets it melt through his fingers. There is the image of the god he worships; mammon is his god; that coined money is the image. Therefore, covetousness is idolatry. I told you that this Tenth Commandment was distinguished from the others in that a violation of it might be a violation of every one of the ten.
(3) Let us look at the third, which says, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” that is, “Thou shalt not use God’s name in witnessing a lie.” What was it that Ananias and Sapphira did? That very thing, and they did it through covetousness. They lied unto God; they invoked God’s name to witness that they paid over to the apostles all the money. That is direct and palpable violation through the love of money of the Third Commandment.
(4) The Fourth says, “Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.” Let me quote a passage (you can think of thousands, but here’s one in point), “In those days saw I in Judah some men treading winepresses on the sabbath, and bringing in sheaves, and lading asses therewith, as also wine, grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the sabbath day, and I testified against them in the day wherein they sold victuals. There dwelt men of Tyre also therein who brought in fish, and all manner of wares, and sold on the sabbath unto the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them, What evil thing is this ye do, and profane the sabbath day?” Then he goes on to tell what measures he adopted to stop this pursuit of traffic on God’s day. Now the love of money prompts hundreds of men here and elsewhere to carry on their secular work on the Lord’s Day.
(5) We take the next commandment: “Honour thy father and thy mother.” How many instances can you recall of the boy or young man who, in his desire to make money, has turned from the counsel of his father and the admonition of his mother? Dearer to him is the making of money than reverence for his parents. I doubt if in many instances any father or mother or wife was ever willing for a son to open a saloon, but the son goes on and opens it; I doubt if in many instances that fathers, motliers, or wives ever want the son or husband to make money by gambling, and yet they go into the gambling den, led on by the desire to get rich quickly, knowing that they are wading in the tears of parents, and sometimes through their blood. So the love of money leads to the violation of that commandment.
(6) “Thou shalt not kill.” A pirate on the high seas kills for booty, or the highwayman shoots an inoffensive traveler for his money. I remember I shall never forget the impression made upon my mind by one of the accounts of John A. Murrell in which a young South Carolinian figured. He had come West to invest some money he had saved up by hard labor, in order to buy some cheap land for his family. He had $900 on his person, and while on the road John A. Murrell emerged from some woods and made him get down from his horse and divest himself of his outer clothes. He then put the pistol to his head and killed him. He disemboweled him to make him sink and then threw him into the water, and took the $900 red with the blood of the murder which he had committed. See also the picture of the apostle Judas with thirty pieces of silver in his hand, and Christ murdered through this sale; he sold Christ for $15.
(7) The Seventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” The love of money has made debauchery a trade, and filled all our cities with houses of shame.
(8) “Thou shalt not steal.” Love of money led Achan, when he saw a wedge of gold and a goodly Babylonian garment, to surreptitiously hide it, and bring defeat on God’s army. It prompts the sneak thief to steal your chickens, to pick your pockets; it animates the burglar that enters your house by night; it looses your horse from the stable and leads him out. So the love of money violates that commandment.
(9) “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” They suborned men to bear false witness, to testify against Christ. Here comes a man who says, “If you will pay me enough, I will go on the stand and swear that he said so and so,”
(10) Take the Tenth Commandment itself. As Ahab looked out and saw a vineyard (Naboth’s) right close to his own property, he “coveted” it. It would “round out” his property to get the vineyard) so he bribed (or, rather, his wife did for him) a man to swear a lie, and then put Naboth to death. You see we have gone through the whole of the Decalogue and find it is true that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. There is no evil in the world of which the love of money may not become a root. Balaam, the prophet of God, for the wages of unrighteousness lent his holy office to purposes that sought to frustrate God’s kingdom. I spoke a while ago on certain limitations that define or bound our desires, one of them being that we should not so covet as to harm ourselves. Now, I want to look at that part of the subject. So the next question is:
6. How may a man harm himself through the love of money?
Ans. (1) I read the case of the rich fool (Luk 12:15-21 ), a case very much in point: “He said unto them, Take heed, and keep yourselves from all covetousness; for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. And he spake a parable unto them saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully; and he reasoned with himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have not where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry. But God said unto him, Thou foolish one, this night is thy soul required of thee; and the things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be?” There was his hurt, even unto death, unto the death of his body, the death of his soul, unto eternal death.
(2) It harms him in this way, viz.: that’ he makes money his enemy instead of his friend. You may “make to yourself friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness”; or you may make with it enemies to yourselves. Now when that self-hurt comes in that way, every dollar one acquires becomes his enemy, when every beam in his house, every timber in the wall, every rafter in the house is a witness against himself. Then money has become one’s enemy; then it harms him in that it diverts him from the true measure. Our Lord put the two treasures side by side when he said, “Lay up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where thieves do not break through and steal and where moth and rust do not corrupt.” Now by that treasure he lays aside, he divests himself of it in order to gratify his covetousness in the other direction, and it is working him harm.
(3) Again I quote a significant passage from Paul, 1Ti 6:9 : “But they that are minded to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men [we are talking about harm that comes to himself] in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil; which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” When I was a little fellow we had a theological dictionary which has now gone out of use; it was a very fine old one called “Buck’s Theological Dictionary.” It had a picture of a man condemned to death by the Inquisition; they had blindfolded him, and behind him was a man and on each side a man, all with spears in hand so that the points of them just touched him. They would gently touch him with these spear points, and as the blindfolded man moved, one point touched him and he made toward the others; first the spear on the left and then on the right, and now the spear behind would get him, if he stopped. Thus he was forced up to the top of a hill with a sharp precipice, and right under the precipice was a chariot, a cart, a four-wheeled thing with an open body of thick wood, and every few inches was a peg with the head of a spear fastened on it, and there was a great mass of spear points standing up. They kept making him move on until he had fallen, fallen right down on that thing and pierced himself through, head, neck, lungs, heart, body, arms, hands, legs, feet, etc. Now says Paul, “They that are minded to be rich will fall into temptation and the snare and pierce themselves through with many sorrows.”
(4) Again he hurts himself in that he brings on total bankruptcy (Luk 6 ). So this love of money is confined in its effects to his love for transitory wealth. Says Psa 49 , “It is certain he can take none of it with him,” and the declaration is repeated by Paul. Now this man did not stop at death; death does not break the continuity of life, but death does stop earthly property which cannot cross the river of death; and the very minute that he leaves the treasure that he has and he touches the other shore, he is wholly bankrupt. Alexander the Great commanded his friends when they buried him to let his hands be outside of the casket, “For,” he said, “I want everybody to see that I, the king of the world, cannot take a thing with me; that my hands are empty.”
(5) He hurts himself, not only in that bankruptcy, but in the fearful finality which is brought upon him. Notice what James says about that, Jas 5:3-6 : “Come now, ye rich) weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have mowed the fields, which is of you kept by fraud, crieth out; and the cries of them that reaped have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure; ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned, ye have killed the righteous one; he doth not resist you,” but in the judgment, God I I told you what the limitations were, and one of them was that though coveting was lawful no coveting was lawful which harms a man himself. When I was a young preacher I asked the Sunday school in the First Church at Waco, this general question:
7. What New Testament scripture shows how much money a man may lawfully acquire?
Ans. That day, visiting the Sunday school, was the famous American, Morgan L. Smith, who made an enormous fortune in Texas, and then went to Newark, New Jersey, and became a great philanthropist. The question was to be answered the next Sunday. The old man was a cripple, but a good old Baptist, and he hobbled up to me and said, “I won’t be here next Sunday; it is a great question you have put to the school, and I would like to know the answer before I go away.” John said to Gaius, a rich man, “I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper [financially] even as thy soul prospers.” If your soul won’t prosper while you are living in a fine house instead of a cottage, you had better get back to that cottage. If you take prosperity of your soul with you, it is no sin to live in a palace. If $10,000 will not lead your soul astray, it is lawful for you to make $10,000; $1,000,000 is lawfully made if your soul still prospers; if you still love God, and your fellow men, you may have $1,000,000,000; yea, $100,000,000,000, if you get it right, and it does not interfere with the prosperity of your soul.
8. Cite and expound Paul’s charge to the rich.
Ans. Now the word “charge” here is used in the sense of putting a man on his oath. “Put the rich in this present world on oath before God, that they be not highminded, nor have their hopes set on the uncertainty of riches) but on God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute, willing to communicate [as well as to accumulate]; laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on the life which is life indeed.” Now that is a brave charge given to a rich man: “See, I out you on your oath before God; that you be ready to give.” A great many to whom I go express themselves as being greatly in sympathy with the cause I represent, but they say that they have made some large investments and they have to meet some oncoming obligations; therefore, they are not ready. “That they be willing to contribute,” reaches the wealthy, and asks that they do contribute and that they be sure in all of their wealth not to make it their hope. Job says that is to deny God.
9. Show how the enormous wealth of Rockefeller and Carnegie may do more harm in its distribution than in its accumulation.
Ana. The enormous wealth in modern times accumulated by questionable methods is wealth that cannot be counted; and yet it may well be said that the vast accumulated wealth of Rockefeller and Carnegie may do more harm in its distribution than in its accumulation. I show two points: (1) Take the twenty millions given to the Chicago University. There is a fortified arsenal of unsound doctrine of all time to come. You cannot dislodge it, for millions are behind it. They have taken millions down into Oklahoma to buy up the lands and the interest of that pours into the treasury until they do not know how to invest their money and every dollar of it is against sound doctrine, against the fundamentals of the faith that Mr. Rockefeller himself professes. (2) Carnegie has startled the world with a big donation of millions and millions and millions, which he says is to pension teachers, and not one dollar shall go to any denominational school. What is the result? There is a temptation among needy scholars to throw aside their allegiance to the denominations in order to come in and get some of the droppings of that pension money. There it stands $20,000,000, and in the other case $30,000,000, consolidated, crystallized, perpetuating until Jesus comes, and the whole power of it working against the truth.
10. Show how society may rightly limit the use of wealth.
Ans. A man has a right to the acquisition and accumulation of property, but he is limited by regulations of society, i.e., he has a right to put up a beef packery and & tannery, but he cannot put it up where the effluvia from that tanyard will render the sanitary conditions uncomfortable to the people who are his neighbors. Subject to social regulations, then, a man has a right to invest his money, but he cannot so invest it as to become a perpetrator of vice. Therefore many societies have risen up and said to certain traffic, “You cannot go into this community, for it is interfering with everybody; it debauches ; it makes thieves, liars, gamblers, and steals away the brains of the people.”
11. Explain how the Jubilee law of Moses opposed covetousness of a neighbor’s land.
Ans. This law reverted all land back to the original owner every fifty years, or in the Jubilee year, and at whatever point in the period of the fifty years any transfer was made, the title was limited to the Jubilee year. By reverting at this time to the original owner, it was not so valuable, as the Jubilee year was approaching and thus land was not so much desired. Now you can understand the Tenth Commandment as I have analyzed and illustrated it in all its parts.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
commandments. Hebrew, plural “all the commandment”, i.e. this whole Law. statutes, and the judgments. See note on Deu 4:1.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
See note on Deu 5:1, Deu 4:1, Deu 4:5, Deu 4:45, Deu 6:1, Deu 11:1, Deu 12:1, Eze 20:11, Mal 4:4, Gal 3:29
Reciprocal: Exo 4:15 – will teach Exo 21:1 – the judgments Exo 24:3 – all the judgments Exo 33:21 – place by Num 21:18 – the lawgiver Deu 26:1 – General 2Ki 17:37 – the statutes 2Ch 33:8 – to do all Neh 9:14 – commandedst Psa 147:19 – his statutes Zec 9:11 – As