Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
Go and Tell Them
Deuteronomy 5:22-33
22 Yahweh spoke these words to all your assembly on the mountain out of the middle of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice. He added no more. He wrote them on two stone tablets, and gave them to me. · WEB
God speaks ten commandments and adds no more, and the people's request for a mediator is approved — followed by a wish.
He added no more Deuteronomy 5:22.
Three words, and they mark off the Ten from everything else in the book. These were spoken by God directly, to the whole assembly, out of the fire — and then the voice stopped. Everything after this chapter reaches the people through a man. The distinction is made by the text, not imposed on it, and it is reinforced by what happens to the two documents: these ten were written on two stone tablets, while the rest was written by Moses in a book and placed beside the ark Deuteronomy 31:26.
The people's reaction is fear, and their statement of it is theologically acute. We have seen today that God does speak with man, and he lives Deuteronomy 5:24.
That is not the complaint of people who learned nothing. They have grasped the extraordinary thing — that a human being can survive hearing God — and they have decided not to risk it twice. Why should we die? For this great fire will consume us Deuteronomy 5:25.
So they ask for an intermediary: go near, and hear all that Yahweh our God shall say, and tell us all that Yahweh our God tells you; and we will hear it, and do it Deuteronomy 5:27.
The request could be read as cowardice, and God does not read it that way. They have well said all that they have spoken Deuteronomy 5:28. The arrangement is approved, and the same approval is cited later as the origin of the promise of a prophet like Moses Deuteronomy 18:16–17. A people who knew they could not stand in the fire were right about themselves.
And then verse 29, which is unlike anything around it.
Oh that there were such a heart in them that they would fear me and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them and with their children forever! Deuteronomy 5:29.
God expresses a wish. Not a command, not a threat, not a prediction — a longing, about people he has just commended, for something he does not compel. He wants the obedience to come from a heart they do not yet have, and he will not produce it by making them.
That verse is the reason the book keeps returning to the heart, and it is answered at the far end: Yahweh your God will circumcise your heart... to love Yahweh your God with all your heart Deuteronomy 30:6. What God wishes for here he undertakes to do there.
The people are sent home to their tents, and Moses is told to stand here by me Deuteronomy 5:31. The whole rest of the book is the content of that conversation, delivered to people who asked not to be present for it.
settled What this mark means