Exodus 20:2

_I AM THE LORD THY GOD, WHICH HAVE BROUGHT THEE OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT, OUT OF THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE._ I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt. God's right to give laws to the Hebrew nation is not founded upon His being the one only God, but upon His having by miraculous interpositions and works of power laid the foundations of their state-not upon His character and claims as the Creator of heaven and earth, but upon His special relation to them as their national Founder and Protector; and hence, by the unparalleled services which He had rendered to the Israelites, He had acquired all the title to their willing and grateful obedience that a benefactor could possibly have. This verse is commonly termed "the preface to the Ten Commandments." Several Jewish writers-Talmud, Targum, Jonathan, and Maimonides-regard this as forming a distinct precept. The Roman...

1,2 God speaks many ways to the children of men; by conscience, by providences, by his voice, to all which we ought carefully to attend; but he never spake at any time so as he spake the TEN COMMANDMENTS. This law God had given to man before; it was written in his heart; but sin so defaced it, that it was necessary to revive the knowledge of it. The law is spiritual, and takes knowledge of the secret thoughts, desires, and dispositions of the heart. Its grand demand is love, without which outward obedience is mere hypocrisy. It requires perfect, unfailing, constant obedience; no law in the world admits disobedience to itself. Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all, James 2:10. Whether in the heart or the conduct, in thought, word, or deed, to omit or to vary any thing, is sin, and the wages of sin is death....

THE FIRST COMMANDMENT Against _mental_ or _theoretic idolatry_. Verse Exodus 20:2. _I_ AM _THE_ LORD _THY GOD_] יהוה אלהיך _Yehovah_ _eloheycha_. On the word JEHOVAH, which we here translate LORD, Genesis 2:4, and _"_Exodus 6:3_"_. And on the word Elohim, here translated GOD, Genesis 1:1. It is worthy of remark that each _individual_ is addressed here, and not the _people collectively_, though they are all necessarily included; that each might feel that he was bound for _himself_ to hear and do all thes

The Hebrew name which is rendered in our King James Version as the ten commandments occurs in Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13; Deuteronomy 10:4. It literally means “the Ten Words.” The Ten Commandments are also called the law, even the commandment Exodus 24:12, the words of the covenant Exodus 34:28, the tables of the covenant Deuteronomy 9:9, the covenant...

EXPOSITION THE DELIVERY OF THE MORAL LAW. Every necessary preparation had now been made. The priests, as well as the people, had "sanctified themselves." A wholesome dread of "breaking" through the fence, and "touching" the mount, had spread itself among the people Moses had returned from the camp to the summit of the mount; and both he and the people were attent to hear the words of the "covenant," which had been announced to them (Exodus 19:5). Then, amid the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the smoke, and the earthquake throbs which shook the ground, a voice like that of a man, distinctly articulate, pronounced the words of that "moral law," which has been from that day to this the guide of life to thousands upon thousands, th

I AM THE LORD THY GOD,.... This verse does not contain the first of these commands, but is a preface to them, showing that God had a right to enact and enjoin the people of Israel laws; and that they were under obligation to attend unto them with reverence, and cheerfully obey them, since he was the Lord, the eternal and immutable Jehovah, the Being of beings, who gives being to all creatures, and gave them theirs, and therefore had a right to give them what laws he pleased; and he was their God, their covenant God, in a special and peculiar manner, their King and their God, they being a Theocracy, and so more immediately under his government, and therefore had laws given them preferable to what any other people had: WHICH HAVE BROUGHT THEE OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT: where they had been afflicted many years, and reduced to great distress, but were brought forth with an high hand, and wit...

Exodus 20:1. _And God spake all these words saying, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me._ God is the only God, and no other object of worship is to be tolerated for a moment. Exodus 20:4. _Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments._ Here we are forb

CHAPTER 20 THE COVENANT REVEALED _ 1. The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1)_ 2. Jehovah's gracious provision (Exodus 20:18) This law covenant is now stated. It was given three times. First orally here, when God spake all these words. Then in Exodus 31 Moses received the tables of stone, “written with the finger of God,” the same finger which later wrote on earth in the sand (John 8). The first tables were broken and Moses was commanded to hew two tables of stone upon which Jehovah again wrote the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34:1). This law was given to Israel exclu

EXODUS 20-24, 34. THE CODES IN EXODUS. Recent study has by many converging lines of argument, based on subject matter, choice of words, relation to the context, idiomatic phrasing, comparison with the historical and prophetical literature, etc., and from an immense accumulation of Biblical facts, proved the extraordinary complexity of the laws in the Pentateuch. Only results can be given here. I. Perhaps the oldest collection is the little code in Exodus 34:17 * J, all short religious laws, and called in the present text the Ten Words of the Covenant. II. Closely parallel with this, both in form and substance, is a somewhat larger collection called The Words of Yahweh (Exodus 24:3) or The Book of the Covenant (Exodus 2

THE LORD THY GOD. The possessive word "thy" points the covenant between God and his people. When taken in the full depth of its meaning it involves that God has chosen them to be his people. He is the _Redeemer._ He has brought his people _out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage._ This, in the manner of Scripture and of providence, is the earnest and guarantee of their deliverance from all other and greater kinds of bondage. WHICH HAVE BROUGHT THEE OUT. Why, on this occasion, was not _the Lord_ rather proclaimed as "creator of heaven and earth?" The true answer evidently is, that the ten commandments were at this time addressed by Jehovah not merely to human creatures, but to the people whom he had redeemed, to those who had been in bondage, but were now free men (Exodus 6:6-7;...