After the people had been received into fellowship with Jehovah through the atoning blood of the sacrifice, they were permitted to ascend the mountain in the persons of their representatives, and there to see God (chap. xxiv. 9-11).
Yer. 1. The promulgation of the ten words of God, containing the fundamental law of the covenant, took place before Moses ascended the mountain again with Aaron (chap. xix. 24). ''All these xuords^^ are the words of God contained in vers. 2-17, which are repeated again in Deut. v. 6-18, with slight variations that do not materially affect the sense,^ and are called the " words mulgation of the law, as they had already introduced it according to chap, xix. 16," also rests upon a misunderstanding of the text of the Bible. There is not a syllable in chap. xx. 18 about the thunder, lightning, and trumpet blast bursting forth afresh after the proclamation of the ten commandments. There is simply an account of the impression, which the alarming phenomena, mentioned in chap. xix. 16-19 as attending the descent of Jehovah upon the mountain (ver. 20), and preceding His speaking to Moses and the people, made upon the people, who had been brought out of the camp to meet with God.
omitted, to give greater clearness to the meaning; and on the other hand it is added before W^^^^ py in ver. 9 for rhetorical reasons. In the fourth commandment (ver. 12) 'y\ty^ is chosen instead of 'y\'2'\ in Ex. ver. 8, and
"lit is reserved for the hortatory clause appended in ver. 15: "and remember that thou wast a servant," etc.; and with this is connected the still further fact, that instead of the fourth commandment being enforced on the ground of the creation of the world in six days and the resting of God on the seventh day, their deliverance from Egypt is adduced as the subjective reason for their observance of the command. In ver. 14, too, the clause "nor thy cattle" (Ex. ver. 10) is amplified rhetorically, and particularized in the words " thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle." So again, in ver. 16, the promise appended to the fifth commandment, " that thy days may be long in the land," etc., is amplified by the interpolation of the clause " and that it may go well with thee," and strengthened by the words " as Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee." In ver. 17, instead of "ipcj' ly
(Ex. ver. 16), the more comprehensive expression fc^ltj; ny is chosen. Again, in the tenth commandment (ver. 18), the " neighbour's wife " is placed first, and then, after the " house," the field is added before the "man servant and maid-servant," whereas in Exodus the "neighbour's house" is of the covenant, the ten words/' in chap, xxxiv. 28, and Deut. iv. 13, X. 4. God spake these words directly to the people, and not " through the medium of His finite spirits," as v. Flofmanrij Kurtz ^ and others suppose. There is not a word in the Old Testament about any such mediation. Not only was it Elohim, according to the chapter before us, who spake these words to the people, and called Himself Jehovah, who had brought Israel out of Egypt (ver. 2), but according to Deut. v. 4, Jehovah spake these words to Israel " face to face, in the mount, out of the midst of the fire." Hence, according to Buxtorf {Dissert, de Decalogo in genere, 1642), the Jewish commentators almost unanimously affirm that God Himself spake the words of the decalogue, and that words were formed in the air by the power of God, and not by the intervention and ministry of angels.^ And even from, the New Testament this cannot be proved to be a doctrine of the Scriptures. For when Stephen says to the Jews, in Acts vii. 53, ^' Ye have received the law " et? Staraya^ ayyeXcov (Eng. Yer. " by the disposition of angels "), and Paul speaks of the law in Gal. iii. 19 as huarayeh BC ayyeXcov ("ordained by angels"), these expressions leave it quite uncertain in what the BiardacreLv of the angels consisted, or what part they took in connection mentioned first, and then the *' wife" along with the "man-servant and maid-servant; " and instead of the repetition of ^bnri, the synonym nisnn is employed. Lastly, in Deuteronomy all the commandments from n^nn ii? onwards are connected together by the repetition of the cop. i before every one, whereas in Exodus it is not introduced at all. — "Now if, after what has been said, the rhetorical and hortatory intention is patent in all the variations of the text of Deuteronomy, even down to the transposition of wife and house in the last ccmmandment, this transposition must also be attributed to the freedom with which the decalogue was reproduced, and the text of Exodus be accepted as the original, which is not to be altered in the interests of any arbitrary exposition of the commandments.
in ver. 1, and the Jerusalem Targum it^ fc<*iD"'D h'hl^- But in the popular Jewish Midrash, the statement in Deut. xxxiii. 2 (cf. Ps. Ixviii. 17), that Jehovah came down upon Sinai " out of myriads of His holiness," i.e. attended by myriads of holy angels, seems to have given rise to the notion that God spake through angels. Thus Josephus represents King Herod as saying to the people, "For ourselves, we have learned from God the most excellent of our doctrines, and the most holy part of our law through angels'''' (Ant 15, 5, 3, Whiston's translation).
with the giving of the law.^ So again, in Heb. ii. 2, where the law, "the word spoken by angels" (Bt ayyeXcov), is placed in contrast with the " salvation which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord " (8ta tov Kvplov), the antithesis is of so indefinite a nature that "t is impossible to draw the conclusion with any certainty, that the writer of this epistle supposed the speaking of God at the promulgation of the decalogue to have been effected through the medium of a number of finite spirits, especially when we consider that in the Epistle to the Hebrews speaking is the term applied to the divine revelation generally (see chap. i. 1). As his object was not to describe with precision the manner in which God spake to the Israelites from Sinai, but only to show the superiority of the Gospel, as the revelation of salvation, to the revelation of the law; he was at liberty to select the indefinite expression Bi dyyeXoyVj and leave it to the readers of his epistle to interpret it more fully for themselves from the Old Testament. According to the Old Testament, however, the law was given through the medium of angels, only so far as God appeared to Moses, as He had done to the patriarchs, in the form of the " Angel of the Lord," and Jehovah came down upon Sinai, according to Deut. xxxiii. 2, surrounded by myriads of holy angels as His escort.^ The notion that God
^ That Stephen cannot have meant to say that God spoke through a number of finite angels, is evident from the fact, that in ver. 38 he had spoken just before of the Angel (in the singular) who spoke to Moses upon Mount Sinai, and had described him in vers. 35 and 30 as the Angel who appeared to Moses in the bash, i.e. as no other than the Angel of Jehovah who was identical with Jehovah. " The Angel of the Lord occupies the same place in ver. 38 as Jehovah in Ex. xix. The angels in ver. 53 and Gal. iii. 19 are taken from Deut. xxxiii. And there the angels do not come in the place of the Lord, but the Lord comes attended by them" (^Hengstenherg).
2 Lud. de Dieu^ in his commentary on Acts vii. 53, after citing the parallel passages Gal. iii. 19 and Heb. ii. 2, correctly observes, that " horum dictorum hgec videtur esse ratio et Veritas. S. Stephanus supra v. 39 dixit, Angelum locutum esse cum Mose in monte Sina, eundem nempe qui in rubo ipsa apparuerat, ver. 35 qui quamvis in se Deus hie tamen xar' oiKouof^tocu tanquam Angelus Dei cseterorumque angelorum prsefectus consideratus e medio angelorum, qui eum undique stipabant, legem in monte Mosi dedit.... Atque inde colligi potest causa, cur apostolus Heb. ii. 2, 3, Legi Evangelium tantopere anteferat. Etsi enim utriusque auctor et promulgator fuerit idem Dei filius, quia tamen legem tulit in forma angeli e senatu angelico et velatus gloria angelorum, tandem vero caro factua et in spake through the medium of " His finite spirits " can only be sustained in one of two ways: either by reducing the angels to personifications of natural phenomena, such as thunder, lightning, and the sound of a trumpet, a process against which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews enters his protest in chap, xii. 19, where he expressly distinguishes the "voice of words" from these phenomena of nature; or else by affirming, with v. Hofmann, that God, the supernatural, cannot be conceived of without a plurality of spirits collected under Him, or apart from His active operation in the world of bodies, in distinction from which these spirits are comprehended with Him and under Him, so that even the ordinary and regular phenomena of nature would have to be regarded as the workings of angels; in which case the existence of angels as created spirits would be called in question, and they would be reduced to mere personifications of divine powers.
The words of the covenant, or ten words, were written by God upon two tables of stone (chap. xxxi. 18), and are called the law and the commandment (ni^^tsni niinn) iu chap. xxiv. 12, as being the kernel and essence of the law. But the Bible contains neither distinct statements, nor definite hints, with reference to the numbering and division of the commandments upon the two tables, — a clear proof that these points do not possess the importance which has frequently been attributed to them. Two different views have arisen in the course of time. Some divide the ten commandments into two pentads, one upon each table. Upon the first they place the commandments concerning
(2) adultery, (3) stealing, (4) false witness, and (5) coveting. Others, again, reckon only three to the first table, and seven to the second. In the first they include the commandments respecting (1) other gods, (2) the name of God, (3) the Sabbath, or those which concern the duties towards God; and in the second, those respecting (1) parents, (2) murder, (3) adultery, (4) stealing, (5) false witness, (6) coveting a neighbour's house, (7) coveting a neighbour's wife, servants, cattle, and other pos- carne manifestatus, gloriara prse se ferens non angelorum sed unigeniti filii Dei, evangelium ipsemet, humana voce, habitans inter homines praedicavit, merito lex angelorum sermo, evangelium autem i olius filii Dei dicitur."
sessions, or those which concern the duties towards one's neighbour. The Jirst view, with the division into two fives, we find in Josephus (Ant. iii. 5, 5) and Pliilo (quis rer. divin. hcer. § 35, de Decal. § 12, etc.); it is unanimously supported by the fathers of the first four centuries,^ and has been retained to the present day by the Eastern and Reformed Churches. The later Jews agree so far with this view, that they only adopt one command ment against coveting; but they differ from it in combining the commandment ai^ainst imaojes with that ao-ainst false ijods, and taking the introductory words '^ I am the Lord thy God" to be the first commandment. This mode of numbering, of which we find the first traces in Julian Apostata (in Cyrilli Alex, c. Julian I. V. iiiit.), and in an allusion made by Jerome (on Hos. x. 10), is at any rate of more recent origin, and probably arose simply from opposition to the Christians. It still prevails, however, among the modern Jews.^
The second view was brought forward by Augustine^ and no one is known to have supported it previous to him. In his Qucest. 71 on Ex., when treating of the question how the commandments are to be divided (" utrum quatuor sint usque ad prseceptum de Sabbatho, quae ad ipsum Deum pertinent, sex autem reliqua, quorum primum: Honora patrem et matrem, quas ad hominem pertinent: an potius ilia tria sint et ipsa septem"), he explains the two different views, and adds, " Mihi tamen videntur congruentius accipi ilia tria et ista septem, quoniam Trinitatem videntur ilia, quae ad Deum pertinent, insinuare diligentius intuentibus." He then proceeds still further to show that the commandment against images is only a fuller explanation of that against other gods, but that the commandment not to covet is divided into two commandments by the repetition of the words, " Thou shalt not covet^^ although " concupiscentia uxoris allenae et concnpiscentia domus allenge tantum in peccando differant." In this division Augustine generally reckons the commandment against coveting the neighbours wife as the ninth, according to the text of Deuteronomy; although in several instances he places it after the coveting of the house, according to the text of Exodus, Through the great respect that v^as felt for Augustine, this division became the usual one in the Western Church; and it was adopted even by Luther and the Lutheran Church, with this difference, however, that both the Catholic and Lutheran Churches regard the commandment not to covet a neighbour's house as the ninth, whilst only a few here and there give the preference, as Augustine does, to the order adopted in Deuteronomy.
Now if we inquire, which of these divisions of the ten commandments is the correct one, there is nothing to warrant either the assumption of the Talmud and the Rabbins, that the words, " I am Jehovah thy God," etc., form the first commandment, or the preference given by Augustine to the text of Deuteronomy, The words, " I am the Lord," etc., contain no independent member of the decalogue, but are merely the preface to the commandments which follow. " Hie sermo nondum sermo mandati est, sed quis sit, qui mandat, ostendit" (Origen, homil. 8 in Ex.). But, as we have already shown, the text of Deuteronomy, in all its deviations from the text of Exodus, can lay no claim to originality. As to the other two views which have obtained a footing in the Church, the historical credentials of priority and majority are not sufficient of themselves to settle the question in favour of the first, which is generally called the Philonian view, from its earliest supporter. It must be decided from the text of the Bible alone. Now in both substance and form this speaks against the Augustinian, Catholic, and Lutheran view, and in favour of the Philonian, or Oriental and Reformed. In substance; for whereas no essential difference can be pointed out in the two clauses which prohibit coveting, so that even Luther has made but one commandment of them in his smaller catechism, there was a very essential difference between the commandment against other gods and that against making an image of God, so far as the Israelites were concerned, as we may see not only from the account of the golden calf at Sinai, but also from the image worship of Gideon (Judg. viii. 27), Micah
(Judg. xvli.), and Jeroboam (1 Kings xii. 28 sqq.)- In/orm; for the last five commandments differ from the first five, not only in the fact that no reasons are assigned for the former, whereas all the latter are enforced by reasons, in which the expression " Jehovah thy God" occurs every time; but still more in the fact, that in the text of Deuteronomy all the commandments after " Thou shalt do no murder" are connected together by the copula \ which is repeated before every sentence, and from which we may see that Moses connected the commandments which treat of duties to one's neighbour more closely together, and by thus linking them together showed that they formed the second half of the decalogue.
The weight of this testimony is not counterbalanced by the division into parashoih and the double accentuation of the Masoretic text, viz. by accents both above and below, even if we assume that this was intended in any way to indicate a logical division of the commandments. In the Hebrew MSS. and editions of the Bible, the decalogue is divided into ten parashoth, with spaces between them marked either by D (^Setiima) or Q (^Phetucha); and whilst the commandments against other gods and images, together with the threat and promise appended to them (vers. 3-6), form one parashah, the commandment against coveting (ver. 14) is divided by a setuma into two. But according to Kennicott (ad Ex. xx. 17, Deut. v. 18, and diss, gener. p. 59) this setuma was wanting in 234 of the 694 MSS. consulted by him, and in many exact editions of the Bible as well; so that the testimony is not unanimous here. It is no argument against this division into parashoth, that it does not agree either with the Philonian or the rabbinical division of the ten commandments, or with the Masoretic arrangement of the verses and the lower accents which correspond to this. For there can be no doubt that it is older than the Masoretic treatment of the text, though it is by no means original on that account. Even when the Targum on the Song of Sol. (v. 13) says that the tables of stone were written in ten D''lp^ or D"'p"'K^j i,e. rows or strophes, like the rows of a garden full of sweet odours, this Targum is much too recent to furnish any valid testimony to the original writing and plan of the decalogue. And the upper accentuation of the decalogue, w^iich corresponds to the division into parashothy has just as little claim to be received as a testimony in favour of " a division of the verses which was once evidently regarded as very significant " {Ewald); on the contrary, it was evidently added to the lower accentuation simply in order that the decalogue might be read in the synagogues on particular days after the parashoth.^ Hence the double accentuation was only so far of importance, as showing that the Masorites regarded the parashoth as sufficiently important, to be retained for reading in the synagogue by a system of accentuation which corresponded to them. But if this division into parashoth had been regarded by the Jews from time immemorial as original, or Mosaic, in its origin; it would be impossible to understand either the rise of other divisions of the decalogue, or the difference between this division and theMasoretic accentuation and arrangement of the verses. From all this so much at any rate is clear, that from a very early period there was a disposition to unite together the two commandments against other gods and images; but assuredly on no other ground than because of the threat and promise with which they are followed, and which must refer, as was correctly assumed, to both commandments. But if these two commandments were classified as one, there was no other way of bringing out the number ten, than to divide the commandment against coveting into two. But as the transposition of the wife and the house in the two texts could not well be reconciled with this, the setuma which separated them in ver 14 did not meet with universal reception.
Lastly, on the division of the ten covenant words upon the two tables of stone, the text of the Bible contains no other information, than that " the tables were written on both their sides " (chap, xxxii, 15), from which we may infer with tolerable certainty, what would otherwise have the greatest probability as being the most natural supposition, viz. that the entire contents of the " ten words" were engraved upon the tables, and not merely the
^ See Geiger (wissensch. Ztschr. iii. 1, 151). According to the testimony of a Rabbin -who had embraced Christianity, the decalogue was read in one way, when it occurred as a Sabbath parashah, either in the middle of January or at the beginning of July, and in another way at the feast of Pentecost, as the feast of the giving of the law; the lower accentuation being followed in the former case, and the upper in the latter. We may compare with this the account given in En Israel^ fol. 103, col. 3, that one form of accentuation was intended for ordinary or private reading, the other for public reading in the synagogue.
ten commandments in the stricter sense, without the accompanying reasons.^ But if neither the numberino; of the ten commander o ments nor their arrangement on the two tables was indicated in the law as drawn up for the guidance of the people of Israel, so that it was possible for even the Israelites to come to different conclusions on the subject; the Christian Church has all the more a perfect right to handle these matters with Christian Ifberty and prudence for the instruction of congregations in the law, from the fact that it is no longer bound to the ten commandments, as a part of the law of Moses, which has been abolished for them through the fulfilment of Christ, but has to receive them for the regulation of its own doctrine and life, simply as being the unchangeable norm of the holy will of God which was fulfilled through Christ.
Yer. 2. The ten words commenced with a declaration of Jehovah concerning Himself, which served as a practical basis for the obligation on the part of the people to keep the commandments: " / am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee," etc. By bringing them out of Egypt, the house of bondage, Jehovah had proved to the Israelites that He was their God. This glorious act, to which Israel owed its existence as an independent nation, was peculiarly fitted, as a distinct and practical manifestation of unmerited divine love, to kindle in the hearts of the people the warmest love in return, and to incite them to keep the commandments. These words are not to be regarded, as
^ If the -whole of the contents stood upon the table, the ten words cannot have been arranged either according to Philo's two pentads, or according to Augustine's division into three and seven; for in either case there would have been far more words upon the first table than upon the second, and, according to Augustine's arrangement, there would have been 131 upon one table, and only 41 upon the other. We obtain a much more suitable result, if the words of vers. 2-7, i.e. the first three commandments according to Philo's reckoning, were engraved upon the one table, and the other seven from the Sabbath commandment onwards upon the other; for in that case there would be 96 words upon the first table and 76 upon the second. If the reasons for the commandments were not written along with them upon the tables, the commandments respecting the name and nature of God, and the keeping of the Sabbath, together with the preamble, which could not possibly be left out, would amount to 73 words in all, the commandment to honour one's parents would contain 5 words, and the rest of the commandments 26.
Knohel supposes, as either a confession, or the foundation of the whole of the theocratlcal law, just as Saleucus, Plato, and other lawgivers placed a behef in the existence of the gods at the head of their laws. Thej were rather the preamble, as Calvin says, by which God prepared the minds of the people for obeying them, and in this sense they were frequently repeated to give emphasis to other laws, sometimes in full, as in chap. xxix. 46, Lev. xix. 36, xxiii. 43, xxv. 38, 55, xxvi. 13, etc., sometimes in the abridged form, " I am Jehovah your God," as in Lev. xi. 44, xviii. 2, 4, 30, xix. 4, 10, 25, 31, 34, xx. 7, etc., for which the simple expression, " I am Jehovah," is now and then substituted, as in Lev. xix. 12, 14, 16, 18, etc.
Yer. 3. The First Woed. — " Let there not he to thee (thou shalt have no) other gods ^l^ ^I^," lit, beyond Me (/V as in Gen. xlviii. 22; Ps. xvi. 2), or in addition to Me (/V as in Gen. xxxi. 50; Deut. xix. 9), equivalent to Trkrjv ifiov (LXX.), " by the side of Me " (^Luther). " Before Me," coram me ( Vulg,, etc.), is incorrect; also against Me, in opposition to Me. (On ''j)2 see chap, xxxiii. 14). The singular t^^^] does not require that we should regard Elohim as an abstract noun in the sense of Deity; and the plural C)''")nx would not suit this rendering (see Gen. i. 14). The sentence is quite a general one, and not only prohibits polytheism and idolatry, the worship of idols in thought, word, and deed (cf. Deut. viii. 11, 17, 19), but also commands the fear, love, and worship of God the Lord (cf. Deut. vi. 5, 13, 17, X. 12, 20). Nearly all the commandments are couched in the negative form of prohibition, because they presuppose the existence of sin and evil desires in the human heart.
Vers. 4-6. The Second Word. — To the prohibition of idolatrous worship there is linked on, as a second word, the prohibition of the worship of images. "After declaring in the first commandment who was the true God, He commanded that He alone should be worshipped; and now He defines what is His lawful worship" (^Calvin). " Thou shalt not make to thyself a likeness and any form of that which is in heaven above, ^ etc. riK^y is construed with a double accusative, so that the literal rendering would be " make, as a likeness and any form, that which is in heaven," etc. ^DS^ from ^DQ to carve wood or stone, is a figure made of wood or stone, and is used in Judg. xvii. 3 sqq. for a figure representing Jehovah, and in other places for figures of heathen deities — of Asherah,for example, in 2 Kings xxi. 7. n:^Dn does not signify an image made by man, but a form which is seen by him (Num. xii. 8; Deut. iv. 12, 15 sqq. Job tiv. 16; Ps. xvii. 15). In Deut. v. 8 (cf. iv. 16) we fina nj^Drrps?pQ "likeness of any form:" so that in this passage also njlDrT73T is to be taken as in apposition to /DSS, and the \ as vav explic.: " and indeed any form," viz. of Jehovah, not of heathen gods. That the words should be so understood, is demanded by Deut. iv. 15 sqq., where.Moses lays stress upon the command, not to make to themselves an image (Sdd) in the form of any sculpture (/^^), and gives this as the reason: " For ye saw no form in the day when Jehovah spake to you at Horeb." This authoritative exposition of the divine prohibition on the part of Moses himself proves undeniably, that ^DQ and nilDD are to be understood as referring to symbolical representations of Jehovah. And the words which follow also receive their authoritative exposition from Deut. iv. 17 and 18. By •■'^ that zvMch is in heaven^^ we are to understand the birds, not the angels, or at the most, according to Deut. iv. 19, the stars a3 well; by " that which is in earth^^ the cattle, reptiles, and the larger or smaller animals; and by " that which is in the water^^ fishes and water animals. " Under the earth''^ is appended to the " water," to express in a pictorial manner the idea of its being lower than the solid ground (cf. Deut. iv. 18). It is not only evident from the context that the allusion is not to the making of images generally, but to the construction of figures of God as objects of religious reverence or worship, but this is expressly stated in ver. 5; so that even Calvin observes, that "there is no necessity to refute what some have foolishly imagined, that sculpture and painting of every kind are condemned here." With the same aptness he has just before observed, that " although Moses only speaks of idols, there is no doubt that by implication he condemns all the forms of false worship, which men have invented for themselves."— Yer. 5. " Thou shalt not pray to them and serve them." (On the form ^1?V|J with the o-sound under the guttural, see Ewald, § 251c?.). "^jn^^n signifies bending before God in prayer, and mvoking His name; 1?y, worship by means of sacrifice and religious ceremonies. The suffixes DHJ and D— {to them, and ihetn) refer to the things in heaven, etc., which are made into pesel^ symbols of Jehovah, as being the principal object of the previous clause, and not to ni^Dr"7^l 703^ although i'pS) "iny is applied in Ps. xcvii. 7 and 2 Kings xvii. 41 to a rude idolatrous worship, which identifies the image as the symbol of deity with the deity itself. Still less do they refer to C3''■^^^5 D\i7S in ver. 3. The threat and promise, which follow in vers, bb and 6, relate to the first two commandments, and not to the second alone; because both of them, although forbidding two forms of idolatry, viz. idolo-latry and ikono-latry, are combined in a higher unity, by the fact, that whenever Jehovah, the God who cannot be copied because He reveals His spiritual nature in no visible form, is worshipped under some visible image, the glory of the invisible God is changed, or Jehovah changed iilto a different God from what He really is. Through either form of idolatry, therefore, Israel would break its covenant with Jehovah. For this reason God enforces the two commandments with the solemn declaration: "I, Jehovah thy God, am ^^\>_ ^^ a jealous God;" Le. not only ^7]\(i)ti]<;, a zealous avenger of sinners, but ^?;Xo- TUTTo?, a jealous God, who w^ill not transfer to another the honour that is due to Him^self (Isa. xlii. 8, xlviii. 11), nor tolerate the worship of any other god (chap, xxxiv. 14), but who directs the warmth of His anger against those who hate Him (Deut. vi. 15), with the same energy with which the warmth of His love (Song of Sol. viii. 6) embraces those who love Him, except that love in the form of grace reaches much further than wrath. The sin of the fathers He visits (punishes) on the children to the third and fourth generation, ^''f^^ third {sc, children) are not grandchildren, but great-grandchildren, and ^''V?"' the fourth generation. On the other hand He shows mercy to the thousandths, i.e. to the thousandth generation (cf. Deut. vii. 9, where "^i^ ^^^p stands for D''Q^^?i'). The cardinal number is used here for the ordinal, for which there was no special form in the case of ^i^Nl. The words '^^^yp and ^^i^M^, in which the punishment and grape are traced to their ultimate foundation, are of great importance to a correct understanding of this utterance of God. The p before '^^^'^ does not take up the genitive with pV again, as Knohel supposes, for no such use of p can be established from Gen. vii. 11, xvi. 3, xiv. 18, xli. 12, or in fact in any way whatever. In this instance p signifies " at" or "in relation to;"
and ^Sit^'7, from its very position, cannot refer to the fathers alone, but to the fathers and children to the third and fourth generation. If it referred to the fathers alone, it would necessarily stand after nbN. '1:11 ''3nsP is to be taken in the same way. God punishes the sin of the fathers in the children to the third and fourth generation in relation to those who hate Ilim, and shows mercy to the thousandth generation in relation to those who love Ilim. The human race is a living organism, in which not only sin and wickedness are transmitted, but evil as the curse of the sin and the punishment of the wickedness. As children receive their nature from their parents, or those who beget them, so they have also to bear and atone for their fathers' guilt. This truth forced itself upon the minds even of thoughtful heathen from their own varied experience (cf. AeschyL Sept. 744; Eurip. according to Plutarch de sera num. vind. 12, 21; Cicero de nat. deorum 3, 38; and Baumgarten-Crusius, bibl. Theol. p. 208). Yet there is no fate in the divine government of the world, no irresistible necessity in the continuous results of good and evil; but there reigns in the world a righteous and gracious God, who not only restrains the course of His penal judgments, as soon as the sinner is brought to reflection by the punishment and hearkens to the voice of God, but who also forgives the sin and iniquity of those ■who love Him, keeping mercy to the thousandth generation (chap, xxxiv. 7). The words neither affirm that sinning fathers remain unpunished, nor that the sins of fathers are punished in the children and grandchildren without any fault of their own: they simply say nothing about whether and how the fathers themselves are punished; and, in order to show the dreadful 'severity of the penal righteousness of God, give prominence to the fact, that punishment is not omitted, — that even when, in the long-suffering of God, it is deferred, it is not therefore neglected, but that the children have to bear the sins of their fathers, whenever, for example (as naturally follows from the connection of children with their fathers, and, as Onkelos has added in his paraphrase of the words), " the children fill up the sins of their fathers," so that the descendants suffer punishment for both their own and their forefathers' misdeeds (Lev.xxvi. 39; Isa. Ixv. 7; Amos vii. 17; Jer. xvi. 11 sqq.; Dan. ix. 16). But when, on the other hand, the hating ceases, when the children forsake their fathers' evil ways, the warmth of the divine wrath is turned into the warmtli of love, and God becomes ^pn ni^'V (" showing mercy ") to them; and this mercy endures not only to the third and fourth generation, but to the thousandth generation, though only in relation to those who love God, and manifest this love by keeping His commandments. " If God continues for a long time His visitation of sin. He continues to all eternity His manifestation of mercy, and we cannot have a better proof of this than in the history of Israel itself" (^Schultz)}
Ver. 7. The Third Word, " Thou sTialt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain^^ is closely connected with the former two. Although there is no God beside Jehovah, the absolute One, and His divine essence cannot be seen or conceived of under any form. He had made known the glory of His nature in His name (chap. iii. 14 sqq., vi. 2), and this was not to be abused by His people. DK^ K^J does not mean to utter the name {^^\ never has this meaning), but in all the passages in which it has been so rendered it retains its proper meaning, " to take up, lift up, raise;" e.g, to take up or raise (begin) a proverb (Num. xxiii, 7; Job xxvii, 1), to lift up a song (Ps. Ixxxi. 3), or a prayer (Isa. xxxvii. 4). And it is evident from the parallel in Ps. xxiv. 4, " to lift up his soul to vanity," that it does not mean " to utter" here. ^)f does not signify a lie ("li?.?^), but according to its etymon HKK^j to be waste, it denotes that which is waste and in disorder, hence that which is empty, vain, and nugatory, for which there is no occasion. This word prohibits all employment of the name of God for vain and unworthy objects, and includes not only false swearing, which is condemned in Lev. xix. 12 as a profanation of the name of Jehovah, but trivial swearing in the ordinary intercourse of life, and every use of the name of God in the service of untruth and lying, for imprecation, witchcraft, or conjuring; whereas the true employment of the name of God is confined to " invocation, prayer, praise, and thanksgiving," which proceeds from a pure, believing heart. The natural heart is very liable to transgress this command, and therefore it is solemnly enforced by the threat, " for Jehovah will not hold him guiltless" (leave him unpunished), etc.
^ On the visitation of the sins of the fathers upon the children, see also Hengstenberg^ Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 446 sqq.
Vers. 8-11. The Fourth Word, ^'Remember the Sahhathday^ to keep it holi/y^ presupposes an acquaintance with the Sabbath, as the expression " remember" is sufficient to show, but not that the Sabbath had been kept before this. From the history of the creation that had been handed down, Israel must have known, that after God had created the world in six days He rested the seventh day, and by His resting sanctified the day (Gen. ii. 3). But hitherto there had been no commandment given to man to sanctify the day. This was given for the first time to Israel at Sinai, after preparation had been made for it by the fact that the manna did not fall on the seventh day of the week (chap. xvi. 22). Here therefore the mode of sanctifying it was established for the first time. The seventh day was to be r\2^ (a festival-keeper, see chap. xvi. 23), i.e. a day of rest belonging to the Lord, and to be consecrated to Him by the fact that no work was performed upon it. The command not to do any (^h) work applied to both man and beast without exception. Those who were to rest are divided into two classes by the omission of the cop. 1 before I'^^y (ver. 10): viz. first, free Israelites (" thou^^) and their children (" thy son and thy daughter^^); and secondly, their slaves (man-servant and maid-servant), and cattle (beasts of draught and burden), and their strangers, i.e. foreign labourers who had settled among the Israelites. " Within thy gates" is equivalent to in the cities, towns, and villages of thy land, not in thy houses (cf. Deut. v. 14, xiv. 21, etc.). '^V^ (a gate) is only applied to the entrances to towns, or large enclosed courts and palaces, never to the entrances into ordinary houses, huts, and tents. nDfc<7p work (cf. Gen. ii. 2), as distinguished from iTihy labour, is not so much a term denoting a lighter kind of labour, as a general and comprehensive term applied to the performance of any task, whether easy or severe, mhy is the execution of a definite task, whether in field labour
(Ps. civ. 23) and mechanical employment (chap, xxxix. 32) on the one hand, or priestly service and the duties connected with worship on the other (chap. xii. 25, 26; Num. iv. 47). On the Sabbath (and also on the day of atonement. Lev. xxiii. 28, 31) every occupation was to rest; on the other feast-days only laborious occupations {^1p^. ^!?^^P, Lev. xxiii. 7 sqq.), i.e. such occupations as came under the denomination of labour, business, or industrial employment. Consequently, not only were ploughing and reaping (xxxiv. 21), pressing wine and carrying goods (Neh. xili. 15), bearing burdens (Jer. xvii. 21), carrying on trade (Amos viil. 5), and holding markets (Neh. xili. 15 sqq.) prohibited, but collecting manna (xvi. 26 sqq.), gathering wood (Num. XV. 32 sqq.), and kindling fire for the purpose of boiling or baking (chap. xxxv. 3). The intention of this resting from every occupation on the Sabbath is evident from the foundation upon which the commandment is based in ver. 11, viz. that at the creation of the heaven and the earth Jehovah rested on the seventh day, and therefore blessed the Sabbath-day and hallowed it. This does not imply, however, that " Israel was to follow the Lord by keeping the Sabbath, and, in imitation of His example, to be active where the Lord was active, and rest where the Lord rested; to copy the Lord in accordance with the lofty aim of man, who was created in His likeness, and make the pulsation of the divine life in a certain sense his own" (^Schultz). For although a parallel is drawn, between the creation of the world by God in six days and His restitig upon the seventh day on the one hand, and the labour of man for six days and his resting upon the seventh on the other; the reason for the keeping of the Sabbath is not to be found in this parallel, but in the fact that God blessed the seventh dav and hallowed it, because He rested upon it. The significance of the Sabbath, therefore, is to be found In God's blessing and sanctifying the seventh day of the week at the creation, i.e. in the fact, that after the work of creation was finished on the seventh day, God blessed and hallowed the created world, filling it with the powers of peace and good belonging to His own blessed rest, and raising it to a participation in the pure light of His holy nature (see Gen. 11. 3). For this reason His people Israel were to keep the Sabbath now, not for the purpose of imitating what God had done, and. enjoying the blessing of God by thus following God Himself, but that on this day they also might rest from their work; and that all the more, because their work was no longer the work appointed to man at the first, when he was created in the likeness of God, work which did not interrupt his blessedness in God (Gen. ii. 15), but that hard labour in the sweat of his brow to which he had been condemned in consequence of the fall. In order therefore that His people might rest from toil so oppressive to both body and soul, and be refreshed, God prescribed the keeping of the Sabbath, that they might thus possess a day for the repose and elevation of their spirits, and a foretaste of the blessedness into which the people of God are at last to enter, the blessedness of the eternal KaTairavat^ airo rcov epycov avrov (Heb. iv. 10), the avd'Travai<; etc rcbv kottcov (R-ev. xiv. 13. See my Archseologie, § 77).
But instead of this objective ground for the sabbatical festival, vy^hich furnished the true idea of the Sabbath, when Moses recapitulated the decalogue, he adduced only the subjective aspect of rest or refreshing (Deut. v. 14, 15), reminding the people, just as in Ex. xxiii. 12, of their bondage in Egypt and their deliverance from it by the strong arm of Jehovah, and then adding, " therefore (that thou mightest remember this deliverance from bondage) Jehovah commanded thee to keep the Sabbath-day." This is not at variance with the reason given in the present verse, but simply gives prominence to a subjective aspect, which was peculiarly adapted to warm the hearts of the people towards the observance of the Sabbath, and to render the Sabbath rest dear to the people, since it served to keep the Israelites constantly in mind of the rest which Jehovah had procured for them from the slave labour of Egypt. For resting from every w^ork is the basis of the observance of the Sabbath; but this observance is an institution peculiar to the Old Testament, and not to be met with in any other nation, though there are many among whom the division of weeks occurs. The observance of the Sabbath, by being adopted into the decalogue, was made the foundation of all the festal times and observances of the Israelites, as they all culminated in the Sabbath rest. At the same time, as an ivrdXi] tov vofiov, an ingredient in the Sinaitic law, it belonged to the " shadow of (good) things to come" (Col. ii. 17, cf. Heb. x. 1), which was to be done away when the " body" in Christ had come. Christ is Lord of the Sabbath (Matt. xii. 8), and after the completion of His work, He also rested on the Sabbath. But He rose again on the Sunday; and through His resurrection, which is the pledge to the world of the fruit of His redeeming work, He has made this day the KvptaKt] rjfiepa (Lord's day) for His Church, to be observed by it till the Captain of its salvation shall return, and having finished the judgment upon all His foes to the veiyjast shall lead it to the rest of that eternal Sabbath, which God prepared for the whole creation through His own resting after the completion of the heaven and the earth.
Yer. 12. The Fifth Word, " Honour thy father and thy mother ^^ does not refer to fellow-men, but to " those who are the representatives (vicarii) of God. Therefore, as God is to be served with honour and fear. His representatives are to be so too" {Luther decern, prcec). This is placed beyond all doubt by Lev. xix. 3, where reverence towards parents is placed on an equality with the observance of the Sabbath, and ^^y^ {fear) is substituted for *133 {ho7iour)» It also follows from ^33, which, as Calvin correctly observes, nihil aliud est quam Deo et hominibus, qui dignitate pollent, justum honorem deferre. Fellowmen or neighbours (H) are to be loved (Lev. xix. 18): parents, on the other hand, are to be honoured and feared; reverence is to be shown to them with heart, mouth, and hand — in thought, word, and deed. But by father and mother we are not to understand merely the authors and preservers of our bodily life, but also the founders, protectors, and promoters of our spiritual life, such as prophets and teachers, to whom sometimes the name of father is given (2 Kings ii. 12, xiii. 14), whilst at other times paternity is ascribed to them by their scholars being called sons and daughters (Ps. xxxiv. 12, xlv. 11; Prov. i. 8, 10, 15, etc.); also the guardians of our bodily and spiritual life, the powers ordained of God, to whom the names of father and mother (Gen. xlv. 8; Judg. v. 7) may justly be applied, since all government has grown out of the relation of father and child, and draws its moral weight and stability, upon which the prosperity and well-being of a nation depends, from the reverence of children towards their parents.^ And the promise, " that thy days may he long (thou mayest live long) in the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee,^ also points to this. There is a double promise here. So long as the nation rejoiced in the possession of obedient children, it was assured of a long life or existence in the land of Canaan; but there is also included the promise
^ " In this demand for reverence to parents, the fifth commandment lays the foundation for tHe sanctification of the whole social life, inasmuch as it thereby teaches us to acknowledge a divine authority in the same" (OeA/er, Dekalog, p. 322).
of a long life, i.e. sl great age, to individuals (cf. Deut. vi, 2, xxii. 7), just as we find in 1 Kings iii. 14 a good old age referred to as a special blessing from God. In Deut. v. 16, the promise of long life is followed by the words, " and that it may be well with thee," which do not alter the sense, but merely explain it more fully.
As the majesty of God was thus to be honoured and feared in parents, so the image of God was to be kept sacred in all men. This thought forms the transition to the rest of the commandments.
Vers. 13-17. The other Five Words or commandments, which determine the duties to one's neighbour, are summed up in Lev. xix. 18 in the one word, " Love thy neighbour as thyself." The order in which they follow one another is the following: they first of all secure life, marriage, and property against active invasion or attack, and then, proceeding from deed to word and thought, they forbid false witness and coveting.^ If, therefore, the first three commandments in this table refer primarily to deeds; the subsequent advance to the prohibition of desire is a proof that the deed is not to be separated from the disposition, and that " the fulfilment of the law is only complete when the heart itself is sanctified" (^OeJiler). Accordingly, in the command, " Thou shalt not ^z7/," not only is the accomplished fact of murder condemned, whether it proceed from open violence or stratagem (chap. xxi. 12, 14, 18), but every act that endangers human life, whether it arise from carelessness (Deut. xxii. 8) or wantonness (Lev. xix. 14), or from hatred, anger, and revenge (Lev. xix. 17, 18). Life is placed at the head of these commandments, not as being the highest earthly possession, but because it is the basis of human existence, and in the life the personality is attacked, and in that the image of God (Gen. ix. 6). The omission of the object still remains to be
^ Luther has pointed out this mirum et aptum ordinem^ and expounds it thus: " Incipit prohibitio a majori usque ad minimum, nam maximum damnum est occisio hominis, deinde proximum violatio conjugis, tertium ablatio facultatis. Quod qui in iis nocere non possunt, saltem lingua nocent, ideo quartum est Isesio famse. Quodsi in iis non praevalent omnibus, saltem corde laedunt proximum, cupiendo quae ejus sunt, in quo et invidia propria consistit."
noticed, as showing that the prohibition inchides not only the killing of a fellow-man, but the destruction of one's own life, or suicide. — The two following commandments are couched in equally general terms. Adultery^ ^^^IJ, which is used in Lev. XX. 10 of both man and woman, signifies (as distinguished fron» nJT to commit fornication) the sexual intercourse of a husband with the wife of another, or of a wife with the husband of another. This prohibition is not only directed against any assault upon the husband's dearest possession, for the tenth commandment guards against that, but upholds the sacredness of marriage as the divine appointment for the propagation and multiplication of the human race; and although addressed primarily to the man, like all the commandments that were given to the whole nation, applies quite as much to the woman as to the man, just as we find in Lev. xx. 10 that adultery was to be punished with death in the case of both the man and the woman. — Property was to be equally inviolable. The command, " Thou shalt not stealj^ prohibited not only the secret or open removal of anotlier person's property, but injury done to it, or fraudulent retention of it, through carelessness or indifference (chap. xxi. 33, xxii. 13, xxiii. 4, 5; Deut. xxii. 1—4). — But lest these commandments should be understood as relating merely to the outward act as such, as they were by the Pharisees, in opposition to whom Christ set forth their true fulfilment (Matt. v. 21 sqq.), God added the further prohibition, " TJiou shalt not answer as a false witness against thy neighhour^^ i.e. give false testimony against him. njV with ^: to answer or give evidence against a person (Gen. XXX. 33). *^V is not evidence, but a witness. Instead of "•i?^ ^V.^ a witness of a lie, who consciously gives utterance to falsehood, we find ^^f ^V in Deuteronomy, one who says what is vain, worthless, unfounded {^'\^ ^p^, chap, xxiii. 1; on t^lK^ see ver. 7). From this it is evident, that not only is lying prohibited, but false and unfounded evidence in general; and not only evidence before a judge, but false evidence of every kind, by which (according to the context) the life, married relation, or property of a neighbour might be endangered (cf. chap, xxiii. 1; Num. xxxv. 30; Deut. xvii. 6, xix. 15, xxii. 13 sqq.). — The last or tenth commandment is directed against desiring (coveting), as the root from which every sin against a neighbour springs, whether it be in word or deed. The l^n^ eindviielv
(^LXX.), coveting, proceeds from the heart (Prov. vi. 25), and brings forth sin, which " is finished" in the act (Jas. i. 14, 15). The repetition of the words, " Thou shalt not covet," does not prove that there are two different commandments, any more than the substitution of i^li.^^nn in Deut. v. 18 for the second Ibnri. Ifpn and njxnn are synonyms, — the only difference between them being, that " the former denotes the desire as founded upon the perception of beauty, and therefore excited from without; the latter, desire originating at the very outset in the person himself, and arising from his own want or inclination" (^Schultz), The repetition merely serves to strengthen and giv6 the greater emphasis to that which constitutes the very kernel of the command, and is just as much in harmony with the simple and appropriate language of the law, as the employment of a synonym in the place of the repetition of the same word is with the rhetorical character of Deuteronomy. Moreover, the objects of desire do not point to two different commandments. This is evident at once from the transposition of the house and wife in Deuteronomy. ri^3 (the house) is not merely the dwelling, but the entire household (as in Gen. xv. 2, Job viii. 15), either including the wife, or exclusive of her. In the text before us she is included; in Deuteronomy she is not, but is placed first as the crown of the man, and a possession more costly than pearls (Prov. xii. 4, xxxi. 10). In this case, the idea of the " house" is restricted to the other property belonging to the domestic economy, which is classified in Deuteronomy as fields, servants, cattle, and whatever else a man may have; whereas in Exodus the " house" is divided into wife, servants, cattle, and the rest of the possessions.
Vers. 18-21 (cf. Deut. v. 19-33). The terrible phenomena, amidst which the Lord displayed His majesty, made the intended impression upon the people who were stationed by the mountain below, so that they desired that God would not speak to them any more, and entreated Moses through their elders to act as mediator between them, promising at the same time that they would hear him (cf. chap. xix. 9, 16-19). 0''^% perceiving: nxn to see being frequently used for perceiving, as being the principle sense by which most of the impressions of the outer world are received {e.g. Gen. xlii. 1; Isa. xliv. 16; Jer. xxxiii. 24). ^y^y fire-torches, are the vivid flashes of lightning (chap.
xix. 16). " They trembled and stood afar ojf:" not daring to come nearer to the mountain, or to ascend it. " And they saidy* viz. the heads of the tribes and elders: cf. Deut. v. 20, where the words of the people are more fully given. ''Lest we die: " cf. Deut. V. 21-23. Though they had discovered that God speaks wdth man, and yet man lives; they felt so much that they were '^^^j Jiesh, i.e. powerless, frail, and alienated by sin from the holy God, that they were afraid lest they should be consumed by this great fire, if they listened any longer to the voice of God. — Yer. 20. To direct the sinner's holy awe in the presence of the holy God, which was expressed in these words of the people, into the proper course of healthy and enduring penitence, Moses first of all took away the false fear of death by the encouraging answer, " Fear not," and then immediately added, " for God is come to prove you." niD3 referred to the testing of the state of the heart in relation to God, as it is explained in the exegetical clause which follows: " that His fear may be before your faces, that ye sin notP By this terrible display of His glory, God desired to inspire them with the true fear of Himself, that they might not sin through distrust, disobedience, or resistance to His guidance and commands. — Yer. 21. "/So the people stood afar off'*'* (as in ver 18), not "went far away," although, according to Deut. v. 30, Moses was directed by God to tell the people to return to their tents. This is passed over here, and it is merely observed, for the purpose of closing the first act in the giving the law, and preparing the way for the second, that the people remained afar off, whereas Moses (and Aaron, cf. xix. 24) drew near to the darkness where God was, to receive the further commands of the Lord.
These refer, first of all, to the general fdrm of divine worship in Israel (xx. 22-26); secondly, to the rights of the Israelites, (a) in a civil or social point of view, i.e. so far as their relation to one another was concerned (xxi. 1-xxiii. 13), and (h) in their religious and theocratical relation to Jehovah (chap, xxiii. 14— 19); and thirdly ^ to the attitude which Jehovah would maintain towards Israel (chap, xxiii. 20-33).
Chap. XX. 22-26. The General Form of Divine Worship IN Israel. — As Jehovah had spoken to the Israelites from heaven, they were not to make gods of earthly materials, such as silver and gold, by the side of Him, but simply to construct an altar of earth or unhewn stones without steps, for the offering up of His sacrifices at the place where He would reveal Himself. "From heaveii^^ Jehovah came down upon Sinai enveloped in the darkness of a cloud; and thereby He made known to the people that His nature was heavenly, and could not be imitated in any earthly material. " Ye shall not make with Me,^ place by the side of, or on a par with Me, '^ gods of silver and gold," — that is to say, idols primarily intended to represent the nature of God, and therefore meant as symbols of Jehovah, but which became false gods from the very fact that they were intended as representations of the purely spiritual God. — Yer. 24. For the worship of Jehovah, the God of heaven, Israel needed only an altar, on which to cause its sacrifices to ascend to God. The altar, as an elevation built up of earth or rough stones, was a symbol of the elevation of man to God, who is enthroned on high in the heaven; and because man was to raise himself to God in his sacrifices, Israel also was to make an altar, though only of earth, or if of stones, not of hewn stones. " For if thou swingest thy tool (plj], lit. sharpness, then any edge tool) over it (over the stone), thou defilest it^^ (ver. 25). '' Of earth:^^ i.e. not " of comparatively simple materials, such as befitted a representation of the creature " (^Schultz on Deut. xii.); for the altar was not to represent the creature, but to be the place to which God came to receive man into His fellowship there. For this reason the altar was to be made of the same material, which formed the earthly soil for the kingdom of God, either of earth or else of stones, just as they existed in their natural state; not, however, " because unpolished stones, which retain their true and native condition, appear to be endowed with a certain native purity, and therefore to be most in harmony with the sanctity of an altar" {Spencer de legg. Hehr. rit. lib. ii. c. 6), for the "native purity" of the earth does not agree with Gen. iii. 17; but because the altar was to set forth the nature of the simple earthlj^ soil, unaltered by the hand of man. The earth, which has been involved in the curse of sin, is to be renewed and glorified into the kingdom of God, not by sinful men, but by the gracious hand of God alone. Moreover, Israel was not to erect the altar for its sacrifices' in any place that it might choose, but only in every place in which Jehovah should bring His name to remembrance. 'W1 U\^ "J''3t'? does not mean " to make the name of the Lord remembered," i.e. to cause men to remember it; but to establish a memorial of His name, i.e. to make a glorious revelation of His divine nature, and thereby to consecrate the place into a holy soil (cf. iii. 5),. upon which Jehovah would come to Israel and bless it. Lastly, the command not to go up to the altar by steps (ver. 26) is followed by the words, " that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon." It was in the feeling of shame that the consciousness of sin first manifested itself, and it was in the shame that the sin was chiefly apparent (Gen. iii. 7); hence the nakedness was a disclosure of sin, through which the altar of God would be desecrated, and for this reason it was forbidden to ascend to the altar by steps. These directions with reference to the altar to be built do not refer merely to the altar, which was built for the conclusion of the covenant, nor are they at variance with the later instructions respecting the one altar at the tabernacle, upon which all the sacrifices were to be presented (Lev. xvii. 8, 9; Deut. xii. 5 sqq.), nor are they merely " provisional;" but they lay the foundation for the future laws with reference to the places of worship, though without restricting them to one particular locality on the one hand, or allowing an unlimited number of altars on the other. Hence "several places and altars are referred to here, because, whilst the people were wandering in the desert, there could be no fixed place for the tabernacle " {JRiehm), But the erection of the altar is unquestionably limited to every place which Jehovah appointed for the purpose by a revelation. We are not to understand the words, however, as referring merely to those places in which the tabernacle and its altar were erected, and to the site of the future temple (Sinai, Shiloh, and Jerusalem), but to all those places also where altars were built and sacrifices offered on extraordinary occasions, on account of God, — appearing there such, for example, as Ebal (Josh. viii. 30 compared with Deut. xxvii. 5), the rock in Ophrah (Judg. vi. 25, 26), and many other places besides.
Israelites in their Civil or Social Relations. — Chap. xxi. 1-11. The mishpatim (ver. 1) are not the "laws, which were to be in force and serve as rules of action/' as Knohel affirmSj but the rights^ by which the national life was formed into a civil commonwealth and the political order secured. These rights had reference first of all to the relation in which the individuals stood one towards another. The personal rights of dependants are placed at the head (vers. 2-11); and first those of slaves (vers. 2-6), which are still more minutely explained in Deut. xv. 12-18, where the observance of them is nrged upon the hearts of the people on subjective grounds. — Ver. 2. The Hebrew servant was to obtain his freedom without paying compensation, after six years of service. According to Deut. XV. 12, this rule applied to tne Hebrew maid-servant as well. The predicate ''"^.^V limits the rule to Israelitish servants, in distinction from slaves of foreign extraction, to whom this law did not apply (cf. Deut. xv. 12, "thy brother").^ An Israelite might buy his own countryman, either when he was sold by a court of justice on account of theft (chap. xxii. 1), or when he was poor and sold himself (Lev. xxv. 39). The emancipation in the seventh year of service was intimately connected with the sabbatical year, though we are not to understand it as taking place in that particular year. " He shall go out free, so. from his master's house, i.e. be set at liberty. Djn: without compensation. In Deuteronomy the master is also commanded not to let him go out empty, but to load him {y^'^V}] to put upon his neck) from his flock, his threshing-floor, and his wine-press (i.e. with corn and wine); that is to say, to give him as much as he could carry away with him. The motive for this command is drawn from their recollection of their own deliverance by Jehovah from the bondage of Egypt. And in ver. 18 an additional reason is supplied, to incline the heart of the master to this emancipation, viz. that "he has served thee for six years the double of a labourer's wages," — that is to say, " he has served and worked so much, that it would have cost twice as much, if it had been necessary to hire a labourer in his place " (Schultz)^^— and " Jehovah thy God hath blessed thee in all that thou doest,"
^ SaalscJiiitz is quite wrong in his supposition, that il^y relates not to Israelites, but to relations of the Israelites who had come over to them from their original native land. (See my Archdologie^ § 112, Note 2.)
sc, through his service. — Vers. 3, 4. There were three different circumstances possible, under which emancipation might take place. The servant might have been unmarried and continued so (1s^2i: with his body, Le, alone, single): in that case, of course, there was no one else to set at liberty. Or he might have brought a wife with him; and in that case his wife was to be set at liberty as well. Or his master might have given him a wife in his bondage, and she might have borne him children: in that case the wife and children were to continue the property of the master. This may appear oppressive, but it was an equitable consequence of the possession of property in slaves at all. At the same time, in order to modify the harshness of such a separation of husband and wife, the option was given to the servant to remain in his master's service, provided he was willing to renounce his liberty for ever (vers. 5, 6). This would very likely be the case as a general rule; for there were various legal arrangements, which are mentioned in other places, by which the lot of Hebrew slaves was greatly softened and placed almost on an equality with that of hired labourers (cf. chap, xxiii. 12; Lev. XXV. 6, 39, 43, 53; Deut. xii. 18, xvi. 11). In this case the master was to take his servant D^>y?!^']i ^^^ lit. to God, i.e., according to the correct rendering of the LXX., Trpo? to fcpLTrjpLov, to the place where judgment was given in the name of God (Deut. i. 17; cf. chap. xxii. 7, 8, and Deut. xix. 17), in order that he might make a declaration there that he gave up his liberty. His ear was then to be bored with an awl against the door or lintel of the house, and by this sign, which was customary in many of the nations of antiquity, to be fastened as it were to the house for ever. That this was the meaning of the piercing of the ear against the door of the house, is evident from the unusual expression in Deut. XV. 17, " and put (the awl) into his ear and into the door, that he may be thy servant for ever," where the ear and the door are co-ordinates. " For ever,^ i.e. as long as he lives. Josephus and the Rabbins would restrict the service to the time ending with the year of jubilee, but without sufficient reason, and contrary to the usage of the language, as o7yP is used in Lev. xxv. 46 to denote service which did not terminate with the year of jubilee. (See the remarks on Lev. xxv. 10; also my Archdologie.)
Vers. 7-11. The daughter of an Israelite, who had been sold hy herfathei* as a maid-servant (^D^5p)J i^e,^ as the sequel shows, as a housekeeper and concubine, stood in a different relation to her master's house. She was not to go out Hke the men-servants, i,e. not to be sent away as free at the end of six years of service; but the three following regulations, which are introduced by D5< (ver. 8), D^^l (ver. 9), and Q^51 (ver. 11), were to be observed with regard to her. In the first place (ver. 8), " if she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himselfi then shall he let her be redeemed^ The ^ before •T^V'! is one of the fifteen cases in which ^ has been marked in the Masoretic text as standing for w; and it cannot possibly signify not in the passage before us. For if it were to be taken as a negative, " that he do not appoint her," sc, as a concubine for himself, the pronoun Sh would certainly not be omitted. •^"^^O (for ^'^^'^, see Ges. § 53, Note 6), to let her be redeemed, i.e, to allow another Israelite to buy her as a concubine; for there can hardly have been any thought of redemption on the part of the father, as it would no doubt be poverty alone that caused him to sell his daughter (Lev. xxv. 39). But " to sell her unto a strange nation (i.e. to any one but a Hebrew), he shall have no power, if he acts mfaithfully towards her^^ i.e. if he do not grant her the promised marriage. In the second place (vers. 9, 10), " if he appoint her as his sorts wife, he shall act towards her according to the rights of daughters,^ i.e. treat her as a daughter; " and if he take him (the son) another (wife), — whether because the son was no longer satisfied, or because the father gave the son another wife in addition to her, — " her food (p^'^ flesh as the chief article of food, instead of Dnp, bread, because the lawgiver had persons of property in his mind, who were in a position to keep concubines), her raiment, and her duty of marriage he shall not dimdnish,* i.e. the claims which she had as a daughter for support, and as his son's wife for conjugal rights, were not to be neglected; he was not to allow his son, therefore, to put her away or treat her badly. With this explanation the difficulties connected with every other are avoided. For instance, if we refer the words of ver. 9 to the son, and understand them as meaning, " if the son should take another wife," we introduce a change of subject without anything to indicate it. If, on the other hand, we regard them as meaning, " if the father (the purchaser) should take to himself another wife," this ought to have come before ver. 9. In the third place (ver. 11), 'Hfhe do not (do not grant) these three unto her^ she shall go out for nothing), without money, ^^ " These three " are food, clothing, and conjugal rights, which are mentioned just before; not " si earn non despondent sibi nee filio^ nee redimi sit passus^^ {Rabbins and others), nor "if he did not give her to his son as a concubine, but diminished her," as Knobel explains it.
Vers. 12-17. Still higher than personal liberty, however, is life itself, the right of existence and personality; and the infliction of injury upon this was not only prohibited, but to be followed by punishment corresponding to the crime. The principle of retribution, jus talionisj which is the only one that embodies the idea of justice, lies at the foundation of these threats. — Vers. 12-14. A death-blow was to be punished with death (cf. Gen. ix. 6; Lev. xxiv. 17). ''He that smiteth a man and (so that) he die (whether on the spot or directly afterwards did not matter), he shall be put to deaths This general rule is still further defined by a distinction being drawn between accidental and intentional killing. " But whoever has not lain in wait (for another's life), and God has caused it to come to his hand^^ (to kill the other); i.e. not only if he did not intend to kill him, but did not even cherish the intention of smiting him, or of doing him harm from hatred and enmity (Num. xxxv. 16—23; Deut. xix. 4, 5), and therefore did so quite unawares, according to a dispensation of God, which is generally called an accident because it is above our comprehension. For such a man God would appoint places of refuge, where he should be protected against the avenger of blood. (On this point, see Num. xxxv, 9 sqq.) — Yer. 14. ''But lie who acts presumptuously against his neighbour^ to slay him with guile, thou shalt take him from Mine altar that he may die.^^ These words are not to be understood as meaning, that only intentional and treacherous killing was to be punished with death; but, without restricting the general rule in ver. 12, they are to be interpreted from their antithesis to ver. 13, as signifying that even the altar of Jehovah was not to protect a man who had committed intentional murder, and carried out his purpose with treachery, (More on this point at Num. xxxv. 16 sqq.) By this regulation, the idea, which was common to the Hebrews and many other nations, that the altar as God's abode afforded protection to any life that was in danger from men, was brought back to the true measure of its validity, and the place of expiation for sins of weakness (cf. Lev. iv. 2, v. 15, 18; Num. xv. 27-31) was prevented from being abused by being made a place of refuge for criminals who were deserving of death. Maltreatment of a father and mother through striking (ver. 15), man-stealing (ver. 16), and cursing parents (ver. 17, cf. Lev. xx. 9), were all to be placed on a par with murder, and punished in the same way. By the " smiting " ("^^n) of parents we are not to understand smiting to death, for in that case HD] would be added as in ver. 12, but any kind of maltreatment. The murder of parents is not mentioned at all, as not likely to occur and hardly conceivable. The cursing (<?P as in Gen. xii. 3) of parents is placed on a par with smiting, because it proceeds from the same disposition; and both were to be punished with deatl^ because the majesty of God was violated in the persons of the parents (cf. chap. XX. 12). Man-stealing was also no less a crime, being a sin against the dignity of man, and a violation of the image of God. For ^'^ " a man," we find in Deut. xxiv. 7, ^^l " a soul," by which both man and woman are intended, and the still more definite limitation, " of his brethren of the children of Israel." The crime remained the same whether he had sold him (the stolen man), or whether he was still found in his hand. (For 1—1, as a sign of an alternative in the linking together of short sentences, see Prov. xxix, 9, and Ewald, § 361.) This is the rendering adopted by most of the earlier translators, and we get no intelligent sense if we divide the clauses thus: " and sell him so that he is found in his hand."
Vers. 18—32. Fatal blows and the crimes placed on a par w^ith them are now followed in simple order by the laws relating to bodily injuries. — Vers. 18, 19. If in the course of a quarrel one man should hit another with a stone or with his fist, so that, although he did not die, he " lay upon his hed^'' i.e. became bedridden; if the person struck should get up again and walk out with his staff, the other would be innocent, he should " only give him his sitting and have him cured^^ i.e. compensate him for his loss of time and the cost of recovery. This certainly implies, on the one hand, that if the man died upon his bed, the injury was to be punished with death, according to ver. 12; and on the other hand, that if he died after getting up and going out, no further punishment was to be inflicted for the injury done. —
Vers. 20, 21. The case was different with regard to a slave. The master had always the right to punish or " chasten" him with a stick (Prov. x. 13, xiii. 24); this right was involved in the paternal authority of the master over the servants in his possession. The law was therefore confined to the abuse of this authority in outbursts of passion, in which case, " if the servant or the maid should die under his hand (i.e, under his blows), he was to be punished'^ (^i??! ^PJ i " vengeance shall surely be taken"). But in what the Dp3 was to consist is not explained; certainly not in slaying by the sword, as the Jewish commentators maintain. The lawgiver would have expressed this by HO'i'' niD. No doubt it was left to the authorities to determine this according to the circumstances. The law in ver. 12 could hardly be applied to a case of this description, although it was afterwards extended to foreigners as well as natives (Lev. xxiv. 21, 22), for the simple reason, that it is hardly conceivable that a master would intentionally kill his slave, who was his possession and money. How far the lawgiver was from presupposing any such intention here, is evident from the law which follows in ver. 21, " Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two (i.e. remain alive), it shall not be avenged, for he is his money." By the continuance of his life, if only for a day or two, it would become perfectly evident that the master did not wish to kill his servant; and if nevertheless he died after this, the loss of the slave was punishment enough for the master. There is no ground whatever for restricting this regulation, as the Rabbins do, to slaves who were not of Hebrew extraction. — Vers. 22-25. If men strove and thrust against a woman with child, who had come near or between them for the purpose of making peace, so that her children come out (come into the world), and no injury was done either to the woman or the child that was born,^ a pecuniary ^ The words nni'^ ^Ky*1 are rendered by the LXX. kxI e^ixOn to 'Trottliou etvr^s f^v l^itKovidf^ivQu^ and the corresponding clause n\"l"' |iDK Dt<"l hy lay 3g e^siKouta/u,iifou rt; consequently the translators have understood the words as meaning that the fruit, the premature birth of which was caused by the blow, if not yet developed into a human form, was not to be regarded as in any sense a human being, so that the giver of the blow was only required to pay a pecuniary compensation, — as Philo expresses it, " on account of the injury done to the woman, and because he prevented nature, which forms and shapes a man into the most beautiful being, from bringing him forth alive." But the arbitrary character of this explanation is apparent at once;
compensation was to be paid, such as the husband of the woman laid upon him, and he was to give it t)vpS!i by (by an appeal to) arbitrators. A fine is imposed, because even if no injury had been done to the woman and the fruit of her womb, such a blow might have endangered life. (For ^<^J to go out of the womb, see Gen. xxv. 25, 26.) The plural n^'J^^ is employed for the purpose of speaking indefinitely, because there might possibly be more than one child in the womb. " But if injury occur (to the mother or the child), thou shalt give soul for soul, eye for eye^... irownc^/ortfowncZ;" thus perfect retribution was to be made. — Vers. 26, 27. But the lex talionis applied to the free Israelite only, not to slaves. In the case of the latter, if the master struck out an eye and destroyed it, i.e. blinded him with the blow, or struck out a tooth, he was to let him go free, as a compensation for the loss of the member. Eye and tooth are individual examples selected to denote all the members, from the most important and indispensable down to the very least. — Vers. 28—32. The life of man is also protected against injury from cattle (cf. Gen. ix. 5). ''If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die, the ox shall he stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten;" because, as the stoning already shows, it was laden with the guilt of murder, and therefore had become unclean (cf. Num. XXXV. 33). The master or owner of the ox was innocent, sc. if his ox had not been known to do so before. But if this were the case, " if his master have been warned (l/y^S "iV^n^ Ut, testimony laid against its master), and notwithstanding this he have not kept it in,^ then the master was to be put to death, because through his carelessness in keeping the ox he had caused the death, and therefore shared the guilt. As this guilt, however, had not been incurred through an intentional crime, but had arisen simply from carelessness, he was allowed to redeem for 17"' only denotes a child, as a fully developed human being, and not the fruit of the womb before it has assumed a human form. In a manner no less arbitrary poK has been rendered by Onkelos and the Rabbins fc<niD, death, and the clause is made to refer to the death of the mother alone, in opposition to the penal sentence in vers. 23, 24, which not only demands life for life, but eye for eye, etc., and therefore presupposes not death alone, but injury done to particular members. The omission of n^, also, apparently his forfeited life by the payment of expiation money (Pr!^, lit covering, expiation, cf. chap. xxx. 12), ^'' according to all that was laid upon him" sc. by the judge. — Vers. 31, 32. The death of a son or a daughter through the goring of an ox was also to be treated in the same way; but that of a slave (man-servant or maid-servant) was to be compensated by the payment of thirty shekels of silver (i.e. probably the ordinary price for the redemption of a slave, as the redemption price of a free Israelite was fifty shekels. Lev. xxvii. 3) on the part of the owner of the ox; but the ox was to be killed in this case also. There are other ancient nations in whose law books we find laws relating to the punishment of animals for killing or wounding a man, but not one of them had a law which made the owner of the animal responsible as well, for they none of them looked upon human life in its likeness of God.
Vers. 33-36. Passing from life to property^ in connection with the foregoing, the life of the animal, the most important possession of the Israelites, is first of all secured against destruction through carelessness. If any one opened or dug a pit or cistern, and did not close it up again, and another man's ox or ass (mentioned, for the sake of example, as the most important animals among the live stock of the IsraeUtes) fell in and was killed, the owner of the pit was to pay its full value, and the dead animal to belong to him. If an ox that was not known to be vicious gored another man's ox to death, the vicious animal was to be sold, and its money (what it fetched) to be divided; the dead animal was also to be divided, so that both parties bore an equal amount of damage. If, on the other hand, the ox had been known to be vicious before, and had not been kept in, carefully secured, by its possessor, he was to compensate the owner of the one that had been killed with the full value of an ox, but to receive the dead one instead.
Chap. xxii. 1-4 (or ver. 37-chap. xxii. 3). With regard to cattle-stealing^ the law makes a distinction between what had been killed or sold, and what was still alive and in the thief s hand (or possession). In the latter case, the thief was to restore piece for piece twofold (ver. 4); in the former, he was to restore an ox fivefold and a small animal (a sheep or a goat) fourfold (ver. 1). The difference between the compensation for an ox and a small animal is to be accounted for from the compara- live worth of the cattk to the possessor, which determined the magnitude of the theft and the amount of the compensation. But the other distinctions of twofold, fourfold, and fivefold restitution cannot be accounted for, either by supposing " that the animal slain or sold was lost to its master, and might have been of peculiar value to him " (Knohel), for such a consideration of personal feelings would have been quite foreign to the law, — not to mention the fact that an animal that had been sold might be recovered by purchase; or from the fact that " the thief in this case had carried his crime still further " {Baumgarten), for the main thing was still the theft, not the consumption or sale of the animal stolen. The reason can only have lain in the educational purpose of the law: viz. in the intention to lead the thief to repent of his crime, to acknowledge his guilt, and to restore what he had stolen. Now, as long as he still retained the stolen animal in his own possession, having neither consumed nor parted with it, this was always in his power; but the possibility was gone as soon as it had either been consumed or sold (see my Archseologie, § 154, Note 3).^
Vers. 2, 3. Into the midst of the laws relating to theft, we have one introduced here, prescribing what was to be done with the thief. " If the thief be found breaking in (i.e. by night according to ver. 3), and be smitten so that he die, there shall be no blood to him (the person smiting him); if the sun has risen upon him (the thief breaking in), there is blood to him:^^ i.e, in the latter case the person killing him drew upon himself blood-guiltiness (D"*^^ lit. drops of blood, blood shed), in the former case he did not. " The reason for this disparity between a thief by night and one in the day is, that the power and intention of a nightly thief are uncertain, and whether he may not have come for the purpose of committing murder; and that by night, if thieves are resisted, they often proceed to murder in their rage; and also that they can neither be recognised, nor resisted and apprehended with safety" (Calovius), In the latter case the slayer contracted blood-guiltiness, because even the life of a thief was
^ Calvin gives the same explanation: Major in scelere obstinatio se prodit^ ubi res furtiva in quasstum conversa est^ nee spes est ulla resipiscentias, atque ita continuo progressu duplicatur malm Jidei crimen. Fieri potest ut fur statim post delictum contremisc(: qui vera animal occidere ausus est^ aut veu' dere^ prorsus in maleficio ohdx 'it.
to be spared, as he could be punished for his crime, and what was stolen be restored according to the regulations laid down in vers. 1 and 4. But if he had not sufficient to make retribution, he was to be sold "/or his stolen,''^ i.e. for the value of what he had stolen, that he might earn by his labour the compensation to be paid.
Vers. 5, 6. Injury done to another man^s field or com was also to be made good by compensation for the injury done. If any one should consume a field or a vineyard, and let loose his beast, so that it fed in another man's field, he was to give the best of his field and vineyard as restitution. These words do not refer to wilful injury, for n?^' does not mean to drive in, but simply to let loose, set at liberty; they refer to injury done from carelessness, when any one neglected to take proper care of a beast that was feeding in his field, and it strayed in consequence, and began grazing in another man's. Hence simple compensation was all that was demanded; though this was to be made " from the best of his field," i.e. quicquid optimum hahehit in agro vel vinea (Jerome).^ — Yer. 6 also relates to unintentional injury, arising from want of proper care: " If fire break out and catch thorns (thorn-hedges surrounding a corn-field, Isa. v. 5; Sir. xxviii. 24), and sheaves, or the standing seed ('"i^'t - ^^® (^oYn standing in the straw), or the field he consumed, he that kindleth the fire shall make compensation (for the damage done)."
Vers. 7-15. In cases of dishonesty, or the loss of property entrusted, the following was to be the recognised right: If money or articles (CJvSj not merely tools and furniture, but clothes and ornaments, cf. Deut. xxii. 5; Isa. Ixi. 10) given to a neighbour to keep should be stolen out of his house, the thief was to restore double if he could be found; but if he could not be discovered, the master of the house was to go before the judicial court (DNiPKH 7^^ see chap. xxi. 6; ^^ ^"]p^ to draw near to), to see " whether he has not stretched out his hand to his neighhour^ s goods. ^^ iiDSPp: lit. employment, then "something earned by employment, a possession. Before the judicial court he was
^ The LXX. have expanded this law by interpolating dvoTiou \k toD dypov uvrov koctoL to ytwnf^u. bcvrou' socv Se tuvtoc rou ocypou Kciroi(ioax,vjai/j before 3D"'D- And the Samaritan does the same. But this expansion is proved to be an arbitrary interpolation, by the simple fact that Tnxvru. tov dypov forms no logical antithesis to dypov srepov.
to cleanse himself of the suspicion of having fraudulently appropriated what had been entrusted to him; and in most cases this could probably be only done by an oath of purification. The Sept. and Vulg. both point to this by interpolating koL o/jbelrac, etjurabit ("and he shall swear"), though we are not warranted in supplying V^f^} in consequence. For, apart from the fact that N?'DK is not to be regarded as a particle of adjuration here, as Rosenmiiller supposes, since this particle signifies " truly " when employed in an oath, and therefore would make the declaration affirmative, whereas the oath was unquestionably to be taken as a release from the suspicion of fraudulent appropriation, and in case of confession an oath was not requisite at all; — apart from all this, if the lawgiver had intended to prescribe an oath for such a case, he would have introduced it here, just as he has done in ver. 11. If the man could free himself before the court from the suspicion of unfaithfulness, he would of course not have to make compensation for what was lost, but the owner would have to bear the damage. This legal process is still further extended in ver. 9: V^^'^'^y^'^'^V^ " upon every matter of trespass " (by which we are to understand, according to the context, unfaithfulness with regard to, or unjust appropriation of, the property of another man, not only when it had been entrusted, but also if it had been found), '^ for ox, for ass, etc., or for any manner of lost thing, of which one says that it is this (" this," viz. the matter of trespass), the cause of both (the parties contending about the right of possession) shall come to the judicial court; and he whom, the court (Elohini) shall pronounce guilty (of unjust appropriation) shall give double compensation to his neighbour: only double as in vers. 4 and 7, not four or fivefold as in ver. 1, because the object in dispute had not been consumed. — Vers. 10 sqq. If an animal entrusted to a neighbour to take care of had either died or hurt itself (^W^, broken a limb), or been driven away by robbers when out at grass (1 Chron. v. 21; 2 Chron. xiv. 14, cf. Job i. 15, 17), without any one (else) seeing it, an oath was to be taken before Jehovah between both (the owner and the keeper of it), " whether he had not stretched out his hand to his neighbour's property," i.e. either killed, or mutilated, or disposed of the animal. This case differs from the previous one, not only in the fact that the animal had either become useless to the owner or was altogether lost, but also in the fact that the keeper, if his statement were true, had not been at all to blame in the matter. The only way in which this could be decided, if there was nj^i pXj i.e. no other eye-witness present than the keeper himself at the time when the fact occurred, was by the keeper taking an oath before Jehovah, that is to say, before the judicial court. And if he took the oath, the master (owner) of it (the animal that had perished, or been lost or injured) was to accept {sc. the oath), and he (thq accused) was not to make reparation. "But if it had been stolen i^y^ from with him (i.e, from his house or stable), he was to make it good,*' because he might have prevented this with proper care (cf. Gen. xxxi. 39). On the other hand, if it had been torn in pieces (viz. by a beast of prey, while it was out at grass), he was not to make any compensation, but only to furnish a proof that he had not been wanting in proper care. ^X? ^'^^?^. " let him bring it as a witness" viz. the animal that had been torn in pieces, or a portion of it, from which it might be seen that he had chased the wild beast to recover its prey (cf. 1 Sam. xvii. 34, 35; Amos iii. 12). — Yers. 14, 15. If any one borrowed an animal of his neighbour (to use it for some kind of work), and it got injured and died, he was to make compensation to the owner, unless the latter were present at the time; but not if he were. " For either he would see that it could not have been averted by any human care; or if it could, seeing that he, the owner himself, was present, and did not avert it, it would only be right that he should suffer the consequence of his own neglect to afford assistance" (Palovius), The words which follow, '1^1 "i"'?^ Di^, cannot have any other meaning than this, " if it was hired, it has come upon his hire," i.e. he has to bear the injury or loss for the money which he got for letting out the animal. The suggestion which Knohel makes with a " perhaps," that "'''^^ refers to a hired labourer, to whom the word is applied in other places, and that the meaning is this, " if it is a labourer for hire, he goes into his hire, — i.e. if the hirer is a daily labourer who has nothing with which to make compensation, he is to enter into the service of the person who let him the animal, for a sufficiently long time to make up for the loss," — is not only opposed to the grammar (the perfect ^^ ^^^ which ^<2J should be used), but is also at variance with the context, " not make it good."
Vers. 16, 17. The seduction of a girl, who belonged to her father as long as she was not betrothed (of. chap. xxi. 7), was also to be regarded as an attack upon the family possession. Whoever persuaded a girl to let him lie with her, was to obtain her for a wife by tlie payment of a dowry pnb see Gen. xxxiv. 12); and if her father refused to give her to him, he was to weigh (pay) money equivalent to the dowry of maidens, i.e. to pay the father just as much for the disgrace brought upon him by the seduction of his daughter, as maidens would receive for a dowry upon their marriage. The seduction of a girl who was betrothed, w^as punished much more severely (see Deut. xxii. 23, 24).
Vers. 18-31. The laws which follow, from ver. 18 onwards, differ both in form and subject-matter from the determinations of right which we have been studying hitherto: in form^ through the omission of the ^3 with which the others were almost invariably introduced; in subject-matter, inasmuch as they make demands upon Israel on the ground of its election to be the holy nation of Jehovah, which go beyond the sphere of natural right, not only prohibiting every inversion of the natural order of things, but requiring the manifestation of love to the infirm and needy out of regard to Jehovah. The transition from the former series to the present one is made by the command in ver. 18, ^' Thou skalt not suffer a witch to live;" witchcraft being, on the one hand, "the vilest way of injuring a neighbour in his property, or even in his body and life" (Ranke), whilst, on the other hand, employment of powers of darkness for the purpose of injuring a neighbour was a practical denial of the divine vocation of Israel, as well as of Jehovah the Holy One of Israel. The witch is mentioned instead of the wizard, " not because witchcraft was not to be punished in the case of men, but because the female sex was more addicted to this crime" (Calovius). n*nn N? (shalt not suffer to live) is chosen instead of the ordinary T\12V* niD (shall surely die), which is used in Lev. xx. 27 of wizards also, not " because the lawgiver intended that the Hebrew witch should be put to death in any case, and the foreigner only if she would not go when she was banished" (Knobel), but because every Hebrew witch was not to be put to death, but regard was to be had to the fact that witclicraft is often nothing but jugglery, and only those witches were to be put to death who would not give up their witchcraft when it was forbidden. Witchcraft is followed in ver. 19 by the unnatural crime of lying with a beast; and this is also threatened with the punishment of death (see Lev. xviii. 23, and xx. 15, 16). — Ver. 20. Whoever offered sacrifice to strange gods instead of to Jehovah alone, was liable to death. D^n^ he shall be banned, put under the ban (cherem), i.e, put to death, and by death devoted to the Lord, to whom he would not devote himself in life (cf. Lev. xxvii. 29, and my Archdologie, § 70). — Ver. 21. The Israelites were not to offer sacrifice to foreign deities; but a foreigner himself they were not only to tolerate, but were not to vex or oppress him, bearing in mind that they also had been foreigners in Egypt (cf. chap, xxiii. 9, and Lev. xix. 33, 34). — W hilst the foreigner, as having no rights, is thus commended to the kindness of the people through their remembrance of what they themselves had experienced in Egypt, those members of the nation itself who were most in need of protection (viz. widows and orphans) are secured from humiliation by an assurance of the special care and watchfulness of Jehovah, under which such forsaken ones stand, inasmuch as Jehovah Himself would take their troubles upon Himself, and punish their oppressors with just retribution. n3y to humiliate, includes not only unjust oppression, but every kind of cold and contemptuous treatment. The suffix in ink (ver. 23) refers to both n:pijK and Din;, according to the rule that when there are two or more subjects of different genders, the masculine is employed (Ges. § 148, 2). The '•3 before D^5 expresses a strong assurance: " yea, if he cries to Me, I will hearken to him" (see Ewald, § 330^). "Killing with the sword" points to wars, in which men and fathers of families perish, and their wives and children are made widows and orphans. — -Vers. 25-27. If a man should lend to one of the poor of his own people, he was not to oppress him by dem.anding interest; and if he gave his upper garment as a pledge, he was to give it him back towards sunset, because it was his only covering; as the poorer classes in the East use the upper garment, consisting of a large square piece of cloth, to sleep in. " It is his clothing for his skin:^^ i,e. it serves for a covering to his body. " Wherein shall he lie?" i.e. in what shall he wrap himself to sleep? (cf. Deut. xxiv. 6, 10-13).— With vers. 28 sqq. God directs Himself at once to the hearts of the Israelites, and attacks the sins of selfishness and covetousness, against which the precepts in vers. 21-27 were directed in their deepest root, for the purpose of opposing all inward resistance to the promotion of His commands. — Ver. 28. " Thou shalt not despise God, and the prince among thy people thou shalt not curse.^* Elohim does not mean either the gods of other nations, as Josephus^ Philo, and others, in their dead and work-holy monotheism, have ren dered the word; or the rulers, as Onkelos and others suppose; but simply God, deity in general, whose majesty was despised in every breach of the commandments of Jehovah, and who was to be honoured in the persons of the rulers (cf. Pro v. xxiv. 21; 1 Pet. ii. 17). Contempt of God consists not only in blasphemies of Jehovah openly expressed, which were to be punished with death (Lev. xxiv. 11 sqq.), but in disregard of His threats with reference to the oppression of the poorer members of His people (vers. 22-27), and in withholding from them what they ought to receive (vers. 29-31). Understood in this way, the command is closely connected not only with what precedes, but also with what follows. The prince (^^?^J, lit. the elevated one) is mentioned by the side of God, because in his exalted position he has to administer the law of God among His people, and to put a stop to what is wrong. — Vers. 29, 30. " Thy fulness and thy flowing thou shalt not delay (to Me)." "^^/^P fulness, signifies the produce of corn (Deut. xxii. 9); and V^'^ (lit, tear, flowing, liquor stillans), which only occurs here, is a poetical epithet for the produce of the press, both wine and oil (cf. haKpvov rcov SevSpcov, LXX.; arhorum lacrimoe, Plin. xi. 6). The meaning is correctly given by the LXX.: a'n'ap')(a^ aXcovo^ Kal Xrjvov aov. That the command not to delay and not to withhold the fulriess, etc., relates to the offering of the first-fruits of the field and vineyard, as is more fully defined in chap, xxiii. 19 and Deut. xxvi. 2—11, is evident from what follows, in which the law given at the exodus from Egypt, with reference to the sanctification of the first-born of man and beast (xiii. 2, 12), is repeated and incorporated in the rights of Israel, inasmuch as the adoption of the first-bom on the part of Jehovah was a perpetual guarantee to the whole nation of the right of covenant fellowship. (On the rule laid down in ver. 30, see Lev. xxii. 27.) — Ver. 31. As the whole nation sanctified itself to the Lord in the sanctification of the first-born, the Israelites were to show themselves to be holy men unto the Lord by not eating " flesh torn to pieces in the field," i.e. the flesh of an animal that had been torn to pieces by a wild beast in the field. Such flesh they were to throw to the dogSj because eating it would defile (cf. Lev. xvii. 15).
Chap, xxiii. 1-13. — Vers. 1-9. Lastly, no one was to violate another's rights. — Ver. 1. " Tho7i shall not raise (bring out) an empty report r i^^^ Vp^', a report that has no foundation, and, as the context shows, does injury to another, charges him with wrongdoing, and involves him in legal proceedings. " Put not thine hand with a wicked man (do not offer him thy hand, or render him assistance), to he a witness of violence T This clause is unquestionably connected with the preceding one, and implies that raising a false report furnishes the wicked man with a pretext for bringing the man, who is suspected of crime on account of this false report, before a court of law; in consequence of which the originator or propagator of the empty report becomes a witness of injustice and violence. — Ver. 2. Just as little should a man follow a multitude to pervert justice. '' Thou shalt not he behind, many (follow the multitude) to evil things, nor answer concerning a dispute to incline thyself after many (i.e. thou shalt not give such testimony in connection with any dispute, in which thou takest part with the great majority), so as toperverf^ (nitiinp)^ sc. justice. But, on the other hand, '' neither shalt thou adorn the poor man in his dispute^^ (ver. 3), i.e. show partiality to the poor or weak man in an unjust cause, out of weak compassion for him. (Compare Lev. xix. 15, a passage which, notwithstanding the fact that "^^n is applied to favour shown to the great or mighty, overthrows KnoheVs conjecture, that i'^l should be read for Tl\ inasmuch as it prohibits the showing of favour to the one as much as to the other.) — Vers. 4, 5. Not only was their conduct not to be determined by public opinion, the direction taken by the multitude, or by weak compassion for a poor man; but personal antipathy, enmity, and hatred were not to lead them to injustice or churlish behaviour. On the contrary, if the Israelite saw his enemy's beast straying, he was to bring it back again; and if he saw it lying down under the weight of its burden, he was to help it up again (cf. Deut. xxii. 1-4). The words '^^'i ^tvp P?"^?.) " cease (desist) to leave it to him (thine enemy); thou shalt loosen it (let it loose) with him^^ which have been so variously explained, cannot have any other signification than this: " beware of leaving an ass which has sunk down be- iieatli its bunk'n in a lu-lpK-sS condition, even to tliinc enemy, to tiy whether he can hel]) it up alone; rather help him to set it loose from its bunlen, that it may ^et up again." This is evident from Deut. xxii. 4, where ^^pynn x^^ « withdraw not thyself," is substituted for 3fV0 rhin^ and* S^V n'pn n^yn^ « set up with liim," for "isr 3frn 3fy. From this it is obvious that:^'fV is used in the first instance in the sense of leaving it alone, leaving it in a helpless condition, and immediately afterwards in the sense of undoing or letting loose. The peculiar turn given to the exj)ression, " thou shalt cease from leaving," is chosen because the ordinary course, which the natural man adopts, is to leave an enemy to take care of his own affairs, without troubling about either him or his difficulties. Such conduct as this the Israelite was to give up, if he ever found his enemy in need of help. — Vers. G sqq. The warning against unkindness towards an enemy is followed by still further prohibitions of injustice in questions of right: viz. in ver. G, a warning against perverting the right of the poor in his cause; in ver. 7, a general command to keep far away from a false matter, and not to slay the innocent and righteous, i.e. not to be guilty of judicial murder, together with the threat that God would not justify the sinner; and in ver. 8, the command not to accept presents, i.e. to be bribed by gifts, because " the gift makes seeing men (Q^npB open eyes) blind, and perverts the causes of the just. ^^ The rendering ''words of the righteous" is not correct; for even if we are to understand the expression "seeing men" as referring to judges, the "righteous" can only refer to those who stand at the bar, and have right on their side, which judges who accept of bribes may turn into wrong. — Ver. 9. The w^arning against oppressing the foreigner, which is repeated from chap. xxii. 20, is not tautological, as Bertheau affirms for the purpose of throwing suspicion upon this verse, but refers to the oppression of a stranger in judicial matters by the refusal of justice, or by harsh and unjust treatment in court (Deut. xxiv. 17, xxvii. 19). " For ye know the soul {animus^ the soul as the seat of feeling) of the stranger ^^ i.e. ye know from your own experience in Egypt how a foreigner feels.