2. sealed a covenant. As everywhere in biblical Hebrew, the literal sense of this idiom is “cut a covenant.” The use of that verb may originate in the cutting of pieces of animals in the covenantal ritual, as in the solemn pact between Abraham and God in Genesis 15.

3. with us—we who are here today, all of us alive. The heavy emphasis of Moses’s language, in which, exceptionally, “us” in the accusative is followed by “we” in the nominative and then the triple language of spatial and temporal presence, “here,” “today,” “alive,” powerfully dramatizes the logic of reenactment at the heart of Deuteronomy. This book is framed as a renewal, through rehearsal, of the law. Its initial seventh-century B.C.E. audience is constantly invited to imagine itself in the shoes, or sandals, of the Israelites who stood before Moses just east of the Jordan as he repeated the law. Moses’s rhetoric, in turn, repeatedly evokes the physical, witnessing presence of the audience he addresses as he reiterates the divine law revealed a generation earlier at Sinai.

5. I was standing between the LORD and you . . . for you were afraid. The seeming contradiction between this verse and the immediately preceding one (“Face-to-face did the LORD speak with you”) has occasioned much exegetical ingenuity, but there is actually strong thematic and narrative logic in the movement from verse 4 to verse 5. The parallel account in Exodus 19 places reiterated emphasis on the idea that the people must remain at a distance, not even touching the base of the mountain, while Moses acts as their intermediary and goes up to the heights to hear God’s words. The Deuteronomist scarcely wants to discard this notion of Moses’s necessary mediation, but, with his own concern for dramatizing Israel as the living aural witnesses of the great epiphany, he introduces two distinct, successive moments in the Sinai experience. God actually addresses the people face-to-face, conveying to them from the midst of the fire the words of revelation that they and their descendants are to remember perpetually. The people, however, cannot tolerate the fearsome directness of this divine address; they recoil from the ascent to the mountaintop and instead allow Moses to act as their intermediary.

in the face of. The verb “to fear” often is followed by a simple direct object. The preposition mipney, “in the face of,” pointedly glances back at “face-to-face” and also amplifies the experience of fear because it suggests a frightened drawing back from before, from the presence, from the face of, the feared object

6–18. This version of the Decalogue is in most respects textually identical with the one that appears in Exodus 20:2–17. For elucidation of many of the significant details, see the commentary on those verses in Exodus. The comments here will be limited to the points where the present version differs from the one in Exodus.

8. no carved likeness, no image. The Hebrew syntax could also be construed as a construct state—i.e., “no carved likeness of an image.” The version in Exodus reads “no carved likeness and no image,” which is probably a difference without an important distinction.

9. and with the third generation. The initial “and” is an addition of our text. Its absence in Exodus 20:5 produces a tighter rhythmic effect.

12. Keep the sabbath day. The Exodus version has “remember” (that is, be mindful of) rather than “keep.” The Midrash Mekhilta famously announced, “‘keep’ and ‘remember’ in a singular utterance,” and the two acts are, indeed, joined in a tight nexus: because we remember or are mindful of something, we keep it. But shamor, “keep,” “observe,” “watch,” is a recurrent term in the didactic rhetoric of Deuteronomy, and so it is hardly surprising that this verb would be favored here.

as the LORD your God has charged you. This Deuteronomic clause of divine injunction is absent in Exodus 20.

14. and your male slave. Again, the initial “and” is added in this version. Similarly, each of the last four commandments here (verses 17–18) is introduced by an “and” lacking in the Exodus text. Though the difference is not major, the lapidary abruptness of the version without the “and’s” lends support to the assumption that it is the primary text while the one here is a secondary elaboration, although one that in most respects hews very close to the original.

your ox and your donkey. Exodus has only “your beast.” Ox and donkey are a kind of synecdoche for all beasts of burden, and part of the legal vocabulary of Deuteronomy.

so that your male slave and your slavegirl may rest like you. This entire clause is absent in Exodus. It serves as a lead-in to the next verse, also lacking in Exodus, in which the liberation from Egypt and the memory of slavery are invoked as the grounds for the sabbath. In Exodus, on the other hand, the sabbath is explained as imitatio dei—just as God rested after the six days of creation, Israel is enjoined to rest on the seventh day. The difference between these two rationales is at least in part a difference in narrative location. The initial iteration of the Decalogue occurs in the direct narration of the awe-inspiring Sinai epiphany, when God, descending from the heavens to make His words known to Israel, powerfully manifests Himself as Creator of heaven and earth. The present reiteration of the Decalogue takes place at the moment Israel is poised to enter the promised land, establish a society, and exercise power over others.

16. as the LORD your God charged you. Precisely as in verse 12, this clause is added to the formulation of the corresponding commandment in Exodus.

and so that He may do well with you. This entire clause is absent in the Exodus version of this commandment, and, with its didactic emphasis of synonymity with the previous clause, is a strong indication that this formulation of the Decalogue is a secondary elaboration.

17. vain witness. The Exodus version reads “false witness.” The present formulation chooses a synonym for “false,” “empty,” “lying” that is the same word used in “You shall not take [literally, bear] the name of the LORD your God in vain.” This translation preserves that repetition of terms.

18. his field. This specification is not part of the Exodus version.

his ox. This is one of only two points in this version of the Decalogue where an initial wE (“and” or “or”) present in Exodus is deleted, rather than the other way around.

19. and nothing more. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “and He did not add.”

21. we have heard His voice from the midst of the fire. This speech of the people is a detailed unpacking of what was indicated compactly, and proleptically, in verse 5. The people in this version of the story that stresses immediate witnessing have actually heard God’s voice speaking the Ten Words from the summit of the mountain engulfed in fire. They draw back in terror—presumably, to the very bottom of the mountain or the approach to it—and make it clear, as they implore Moses to serve henceforth as their intermediary, that this is not an experience they would venture to undergo a second time. Thus the story succeeds in having it both ways—representing the people as having heard God’s words with their own ears and firmly establishing Moses in his role as teacher and necessary intermediary between Israel and God.

23. mortal flesh. Literally, “all flesh.”

the living God . . . has lived. There is a striking play between God’s overwhelmingly powerful, incandescent, eternal life and the fragile life of ephemeral man exposed to this terrific presence of the deity. Some scholars have also seen in the epitaph “living God” a counterpoint to the lifeless fetishes that the Deuteronomist often mocks.

25. They have done well in all that they have spoken. At the conclusion of the episode, God resoundingly confirms the rightness of the people’s entreaty that Moses stand as gobetween in all communications from the deity. One may detect in all this the interest of a royal scribal elite promoting itself as the necessary authoritative mediators of God’s words for the people.

30. so that you may live and it will be well with you, and you will long endure on the land. This didactic flourish reflects an underlying view of history in Deuteronomy. In this era of incursions by great empires, of deportations and destruction of kingdoms, Israel’s endurance on the land promised to it is constantly, dangerously, contingent on its faithfully hewing to all that God has commanded.