the sky, is a rhetorical description of the awful majesty of the pillar of fire, in which the glory of the Lord appeared upon Sinai, intended to impress deeply upon the minds of the people the remembrance of this manifestation of God. And the expression, “darkness, clouds, and thick darkness,” which is equivalent to the smoking of the great mountain (Exo 19:18), is employed with the same object. And lastly (Deu 4:12, Deu 4:13), he reminds them that the Lord spoke out of the midst of the fire, and adds this important remark, to prepare the way for what is to follow, “Ye heard the sound of the words, but ye did not see a shape,” which not only agrees most fully with Ex 24, where it is stated that the sight of the glory of Jehovah upon the mountain appeared to the people as they stood at the foot of the mountain “like devouring fire” (Deu 4:17), and that even the elders who “saw God” upon the mountain at the conclusion of the covenant saw no form of God (Deu 4:11), but also with Exo 33:20, Exo 33:23, according to which no man can see the face (פּנים) of God. Even the similitude (Temunah) of Jehovah, which Moses saw when the Lord spoke to him mouth to mouth (Num 12:8), was not the form of the essential being of God which was visible to his bodily eyes, but simply a manifestation of the glory of God answering to his own intuition and perceptive faculty, which is not to be regarded as a form of God which was an adequate representation of the divine nature. The true God has no such form which is visible to the human eye.
Verse 13
The Israelites, therefore, could not see a form of God, but could only hear the voice of His words, when the Lord proclaimed His covenant to them, and gave utterance to the ten words, which He afterwards gave to Moses written upon two tables of stone (Exo 20:1-14 [17], and Exo 31:18, compared with Exo 24:12). On the “tables of stone,” see at Exo 34:1.
Verse 14
When the Lord Himself had made known to the people in the ten words the covenant which He commanded them to do, He directed Moses to teach them laws and rights which they were to observe in Canaan, viz., the rights and statutes of the Sinaitic legislation, from Ex 21 onwards.
verses 15-16
As the Israelites had seen no shape of God at Horeb, they were to beware for their souls' sake (for their lives) of acting corruptly, and making to themselves any kind of image of Jehovah their God, namely, as the context shows, to worship God in it. (On pesel, see at Exo 20:4.) The words which follow, viz., “a form of any kind of sculpture,” and “a representation of male or female” (for tabnith, see at Exo 25:9), are in apposition to “graven
