upon the mount as the first days, forty days (a resumption of Deu 9:18 and Deu 9:25); and the Lord hearkened to me this time also (word for word, as in Deu 9:19). “Jehovah would not destroy thee (Israel).” Therefore He commanded Moses to arise to depart before the people, i.e., as leader of the people to command and superintend their removal and march. In form, this command is connected with Exo 34:1; but Moses refers here not only to that word of the Lord with the limitation added there in Exo 34:2, but to the ultimate, full, and unconditional assurance of God, in which the Lord Himself promised to go with His people and bring them to Canaan (Exo 34:14.).
verses 12-13
The proof that Israel had no righteousness before God is followed on the positive side by an expansion of the main law laid down in Deu 6:4., to love God with all the heart, which is introduced by the words, “and now Israel,” sc., now that thou hast everything without desert or worthiness, purely from forgiving grace. “What doth the Lord thy God require of thee?” Nothing further than that thou fearest Him, “to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve Him with all the heart and all the soul.” אם כּי, unless, or except that, presupposes a negative clause (cf. Gen 39:9), which is implied here in the previous question, or else to be supplied as the answer. The demand for fear, love, and reverence towards the Lord, is no doubt very hard for the natural man to fulfil, and all the harder the deeper it goes into the heart; but after such manifestations of the love and grace of God, it only follows as a matter of course. “Fear, love, and obedience would naturally have taken root of themselves within the heart, if man had not corrupted his own heart.” Love, which is the only thing demanded in Deu 6:5, is here preceded by fear, which is the only thing mentioned in Deu 5:26 and Deu 6:24.[1]
The fear of the Lord, which springs from the knowledge of one's own unholiness in the presence of the holy God, ought to form the one leading emotion in the heart prompting to walk in all the ways of the Lord, and to maintain morality of conduct in its strictest form.
- ↑ The fear of God is to be united with the love of God; for love without fear makes men remiss, and fear without love makes them servile and desperate (J. Gerhard).
