Deuteronomy — Chapter 5

Hear, O Israel, the ceremonies and judgments that I speak in your ears this day. Moses repeats the Decalogue before his death as the summary of all religion; the repetition shows its perpetual binding force on all peoples.

I was the mediator and stood between the Lord and you. Lapide: Moses was mediator between God and the people, as the Apostle says (Gal. 3:19). Why then should not the Saints be called mediators? The office of mediation belongs by excellence to Christ, but is shared by participation with the saints who intercede for us.

I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Lapide notes that Jehovah (the Tetragrammaton) signifies the divine essence as the source of all being; Elohim signifies God as judge and governor of all. Together they inculcate both the absolute being and the sovereign majesty of God the Lawgiver.

Thou shalt not have strange gods before me. Lapide: The so-called alien gods are not truly gods at all, but things which the nations estranged from God worship as such. God forbids any other to be acknowledged as God, and commands that He alone be adored both inwardly in mind and heart, and outwardly in worship and sacrifice.

Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing. Lapide refutes Calvin's claim that all images are universally forbidden here. In truth, the prohibition concerns only images of false gods, not images of the true God or of holy persons, as is proved: (1) God Himself appeared visibly to Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and Ezekiel; (2) He commanded the making of the Cherubim, the brazen serpent, etc.; (3) the prohibition is immediately connected with the previous verse about strange gods. The division of the Decalogue by Catholics (following Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, and the Scholastics) is vindicated against the Jewish and Calvinist division.

Lapide demonstrates that the Decalogue contains precisely ten precepts when rightly divided: the first two (no strange gods; no graven things) form one commandment about the cult of God; the last two (covet not wife; covet not goods) are distinct, since they differ as adultery differs from theft.

Honour thy father and thy mother. Lapide notes that Moses in Deuteronomy repeats the Decalogue with additions (here adding 'as the Lord thy God commanded thee' and 'that it may be well with thee'), showing that the love of God is the foundation of all social life, and piety toward parents flows from piety toward God.

These words the Lord spoke to all the multitude of you in the mountain from the midst of fire and cloud and darkness. The divine Lawgiver spoke aloud the Decalogue to the whole assembled people; all other precepts He gave only to Moses. Thus the Decalogue is distinguished from ceremonial and judicial law as its permanent moral foundation.