OLD TESTAMENT

Exodus 20:1

The Holy Bible · English
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1

God spoke all these words, saying,

ExplanationCommentary
EXPLANATION

Verse 1. The Lord now, by his angel, delivers in an intelligible manner the ten words, or commandments, which contain the sum of all the natural law, and may be reduced to two precepts of charity, Matthew 22:40. Mar. 12:31. How these commandments are to be divided into ten, the ancients are not perfectly agreed. We follow the authority of Saint Augustine, (9. 71,) Clement, (strom. 6,) and others, in referring three of the precepts to God, and seven to our neighbour. Protestants adopt the Jewish method, of making four commandments of the first table, and six of the second; as they divide our first into two, and unite the 9th and 10th; though it surely must appear rational to admit a distinct precept, for an internal as well as for an external object; and the desires of committing adultery or theft require a distinct prohibition no less than the external actions. Whereas the forbidding to have strange gods, or to worship images, or creatures of any description, is exactly of the same tendency. For no one can worship an idol, without admitting a strange god. The latter part, therefore, of the first commandment, or the second of Protestants, is only a farther explanation of what had gone before, as Moses himself clearly insinuates, verse 23. You shall not make gods of silver, and so forth

EXPLANATION

After “God”, the Hebrew has the two letters “Aleph Tav” (the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet), not as a word, but as a grammatical marker.

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