Commentary - Exodus 20:1-17

Bird's-eye view

The Ten Commandments are not a list of suggestions for self-improvement, nor are they a ladder by which unregenerate man might climb up to God. Rather, this is the covenant constitution for a redeemed people. Having been delivered from bondage in Egypt by sheer grace, the people of Israel are now gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai to receive the law from their King. This law is a gift of grace. It defines the life of liberty, outlining what it looks like to live as the free people of God under the direct rule of God. The structure is simple and profound: the first four commandments deal with our vertical duty to love God, and the last six deal with our horizontal duty to love our neighbor. This is the very pattern of true righteousness, a reflection of the character of God Himself, given to His people so that they might know how to live in fellowship with Him and with one another. It is the foundation of all true justice and societal health.

Crucially, the law is prefaced by the gospel. God does not say, "If you keep these rules, I will be your God." He says, "I am your God, who brought you out of Egypt... therefore, live this way." Redemption is the basis for the commands, not the reward for them. For the Christian, the law serves three primary purposes: it acts as a mirror, showing us our sin and our desperate need for a savior; it restrains evil in the civil realm; and for the believer, it is a guide, the royal law of liberty that instructs us in the righteousness we now pursue out of love for the one who redeemed us. Christ did not abolish this law; He fulfilled it, and He writes it on the hearts of His people by the Holy Spirit.

Outline

Context In Exodus

Exodus 20 is the pinnacle of the story so far. The first eighteen chapters detail God's mighty acts of salvation. He heard the cry of His people in bondage, raised up a deliverer in Moses, crushed the gods of Egypt with ten plagues, and brought Israel out through the Red Sea on dry ground. He has provided for them in the wilderness with manna and water from a rock. They are a saved people. Chapter 19 describes their arrival at Sinai, where God consecrates them and prepares them to meet with Him. The giving of the Ten Commandments in chapter 20 is therefore the formal establishment of the covenant between Yahweh the King and Israel His chosen people. This is the law for the kingdom. It is followed by the "Book of the Covenant" (Exod 21-23), which provides specific case laws that apply the principles of the Ten Commandments to the life of the nation. This whole event is the constitutional convention of the nation of Israel, with God Himself as the lawgiver.

Key Issues

The Royal Law of Liberty

It is a common and tragic mistake to view the Ten Commandments as a grim list of prohibitions, a divine killjoy. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a charter of freedom. Imagine a man who has been a slave his whole life, knowing nothing but arbitrary commands, back-breaking labor, and the whip of a taskmaster. Now he is set free. What does he do? How does a free man live? He needs to be taught. The law of God is that instruction. It is the Creator telling His creatures how they were designed to function. It is a loving Father giving the house rules to His children. The prohibitions are like a fence around a playground on the edge of a cliff. They are not there to restrict the fun, but to prevent certain death, allowing for true, exuberant freedom within the safe boundaries. The law is the shape of love. To love God is to worship Him alone, in the way He has prescribed. To love your neighbor is to honor his parents, protect his life, his marriage, his property, his reputation, and his peace of mind. This is not legalism; it is the architecture of a flourishing society.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 Then God spoke all these words, saying,

The source of this law is ultimate. It does not come from a committee, a philosopher, or a king. These are not the distilled wisdom of the ages. This is a direct address from the sovereign God of the universe. "God spoke." This fact alone establishes the absolute, unchanging, and universal authority of what follows. These are not suggestions; they are divine commands, flowing from the very character of the Lawgiver.

2 “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

Before God gives a single command, He establishes the relationship. This is the preamble, and it is pure gospel. He identifies Himself by His covenant name, Yahweh, and by His saving act. He is their God, not in the abstract, but because He has acted decisively in history to redeem them. He is the one who rescued them from slavery. Grace always precedes the law. Obedience is the response of a grateful, redeemed people, not the attempt of a sinful people to earn their redemption. Every time we approach the law, we must come by way of this verse. We obey because we have been set free.

3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.

The first commandment establishes the principle of exclusive loyalty. The Hebrew literally says "no other gods before my face." This means no other ultimate allegiances in My presence. Yahweh, the Redeemer God, demands to be number one with a bullet. All other loyalties, whether to family, nation, self, or any other created thing, must be subordinate to our loyalty to Him. This is the foundation of everything. If we get this wrong, we will get everything else wrong. Monotheism is not just a mathematical statement about the number of gods; it is a demand for total, unrivaled devotion to the one true God.

4-6 “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

If the first commandment is about who we worship, the second is about how we worship. We are not to invent our own methods. Specifically, we are forbidden from creating any physical representation of God for the purpose of worship. This is not a ban on art, but a ban on idolatry. It forbids not only the worship of false gods, but also the worship of the true God in a false way, as Israel did with the golden calf. God is spirit, and He must be worshiped in spirit and in truth, not through some image our hands have made. God's "jealousy" is not a petty human emotion; it is His righteous zeal for the purity of the covenant relationship, like a husband's righteous jealousy for his wife's fidelity. The generational consequences are not God arbitrarily punishing children for their parents' sins. It is a statement of organic reality: sin and righteousness have compounding effects over generations. Fathers who hate God teach their children to do the same, and the consequences accumulate. Conversely, faithfulness creates a legacy of blessing that extends for thousands of generations.

7 “You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain, for Yahweh will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.

This commandment is about far more than just profanity. The Hebrew for "take in vain" means to lift up the name to emptiness or worthlessness. It is about attaching the name of God to anything that is false, trivial, or hypocritical. This includes perjury (swearing a false oath in God's name), blasphemy, and, most searchingly for us, claiming to be a follower of God while living a life that dishonors Him. To wear the name "Christian" and then to live like the world is to take His name in vain. It is to make the name of God seem empty. God promises that He will not hold such a person guiltless. Our representation of God in the world matters infinitely.

8-11 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of Yahweh your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female slave or your cattle or your sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

The fourth commandment establishes the rhythm of creation as the rhythm of our lives: work and rest. For six days, we are commanded to labor diligently. Work is not a curse; it is a central part of our created purpose. But on the seventh day, we are to cease from our ordinary labors and keep the day holy. The basis for this is creation itself. God worked for six days and rested on the seventh, setting a pattern for His image-bearers. This is a gift of grace, a weekly reminder that we are not slaves to our work and that God is the ultimate provider. For the new covenant church, this principle is fulfilled in the Lord's Day, the first day of the week, where we celebrate the new creation inaugurated by Christ's resurrection. It is a day for worship, fellowship, and rest from our worldly occupations.

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which Yahweh your God gives you.

The fifth commandment serves as the bridge from the first table (loving God) to the second (loving neighbor). Our parents are the first authority God places over us, and how we relate to them is foundational to how we relate to all other forms of authority, including civil and ecclesiastical. Honor is more than just obedience; it includes respect, deference, and, for adult children, providing for parents in their old age. This is the "first commandment with a promise." The promise of long life in the land is not primarily an individual guarantee, but a corporate one. A society that honors parental authority will be a stable, blessed, and enduring society. A society that despises it will crumble from within.

13 “You shall not murder.

The sixth commandment protects the sanctity of human life. The Hebrew word here, ratsach, refers specifically to unlawful, premeditated killing, not all killing. The Bible itself commands capital punishment for certain crimes and regulates just warfare, both of which involve killing. This commandment forbids murder because man is made in the image of God. To murder a human being is to attack God in effigy. Jesus expands on this in the Sermon on the Mount, showing that the root of murder is anger and contempt in the heart.

14 “You shall not commit adultery.

The seventh commandment protects the sanctity of the marriage covenant. Marriage is the one-flesh union between a man and a woman that God established at creation, and it is a picture of the covenant between Christ and His Church. Adultery is a violent assault on this sacred bond, a profound act of betrayal and covenant-breaking. Like murder, it attacks a foundational institution of God's created order. And again, Jesus teaches that the root of this sin is lust in the heart.

15 “You shall not steal.

The eighth commandment protects the sanctity of private property. This commandment establishes that God's law recognizes and protects the right of individuals and families to own and control property. Stealing is the unlawful taking of what rightfully belongs to another. This includes everything from burglary and embezzlement to fraud, defaulting on debts, and currency debasement by the state. The positive implication is that we are to be industrious, so that we have something to give, rather than something to take.

16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

The ninth commandment protects the sanctity of truth and reputation. While its most formal application is forbidding perjury in a court of law, its principle extends to all forms of falsehood that would harm our neighbor. This includes slander, gossip, misrepresentation, and any kind of deceit. A just and loving community cannot function without a commitment to the truth. Words have the power to build up or to destroy, and this command requires us to use them for the former.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male slave or his female slave or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

The final commandment is brilliant and devastating, for it moves from outward actions to the inner desires of the heart. Coveting is the sinful desire for something that belongs to another. It is the root from which theft, adultery, and even murder grow. By forbidding a sinful thought, this commandment demonstrates that God's law is not a mere external code that can be kept by behavioral modification. It demands total heart righteousness. This is the commandment that exposes our utter inability to save ourselves and drives us to the cross. As Paul says in Romans 7, it was this law that showed him the true nature of his sin. No one can claim to have kept this perfectly. It proves that we all need a savior who not only lived a perfect outward life, but who had a perfect heart.

Application

The Ten Commandments remain profoundly relevant for the Christian. We are not under the law as a system of salvation; we have been saved by grace. But we are under the law as a rule of life. For the believer, the law is no longer a harsh taskmaster demanding a righteousness we cannot produce. Instead, it is a loving guide, showing us the paths of wisdom and blessing. It is the family code for the household of God.

Therefore, we should use this law as a regular diagnostic for our souls. Do we have any gods before Yahweh? Is our worship shaped by His Word or by our own preferences? Do we treat His name with reverence? Do we honor His day? Do we rightly order our relationships of authority? Do we respect the life, marriage, property, and reputation of our neighbor? And, most searchingly, what are the ruling desires of our hearts? When the law exposes our sin, as it inevitably will, we are not to despair. We are to run to Christ, our advocate, who has fulfilled the law for us and paid the penalty for our breaking of it. And then, filled with His Spirit, we are to get up and walk in the law's righteous requirements, not to earn our salvation, but to express our love and gratitude for it.