Exodus 20 explained

Before a single command, God says who he is: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt" (20:2). What the WEB calls "the ten commandments" (34:28) are, in Hebrew, the ten words, and they were spoken aloud before they were written on stone (20:22, 31:18). Jesus took two of them further, to anger and to lust in the heart (Matthew 5:21-28).

Before God gives a single command, he says who he is and what he has done: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" (20:2). Only then comes "You shall have no other gods before me" (20:3). These words are spoken to people he has already brought out. In Egypt the LORD had told Moses to say to them, "I will take you to myself for a people. I will be your God" (6:7). When Moses repeats the Sabbath command in Deuteronomy, its reason looks back to the same rescue: "You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm" (Deuteronomy 5:15).

There are no tablets in Exodus 20. "God spoke all these words" (20:1), and the LORD's message to Israel is, "You yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven" (20:22). The tablets come later: "Come up to me on the mountain, and stay here, and I will give you the stone tablets" (24:12), given "When he finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai" (31:18). Moses tells it the same way: "The LORD spoke these words to all your assembly on the mountain out of the middle of the fire… He wrote them on two stone tablets" (Deuteronomy 5:22).

Exodus 20:1 · Exodus 20:22 · Exodus 24:12 · Exodus 31:18 · Deuteronomy 5:22

Exodus 20:13→leads toMatthew 5:21-22

"You shall not murder" (20:13). Jesus quoted it: "You have heard that it was said to the ancient ones, ‘You shall not murder;’ and ‘Whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’" (Matthew 5:21). Then he took it further: "But I tell you that everyone who is angry with his brother without a cause will be in danger of the judgment" (Matthew 5:22). He had just said, "Don’t think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17).

דָּבָרdavarsay da-VAR

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "speech, word". Strong's: "a word; by implication, a matter (as spoken of) or thing". The chapter opens, "God spoke all these words" (20:1), with the plural, devarim. When the number ten is given, the WEB has "the ten commandments" (34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13, 10:4), but in Hebrew each of those verses reads aseret ha-devarim, the ten words. In 34:28 the same verse also calls them "the words of the covenant".

God told Israel who he was and what he had done before he gave a single command (20:2). How does remembering what God has done for you change the way you hear what he asks of you?