Notes: Sect. 4. — The Promise and Covenant with Abraham renewed with the Israelites.
Notes: Sect. 4. — The Promise and Covenant with Abraham renewed with the Israelites.
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I see no warrant for restraining the sense of this text to their desiring a mediator. The universal term, “All that they have spoken,” also includes their engaging to receive the law at the mouth of the mediator, which is joined with their desire, ver. 27: “Go near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say; and speak to us all that the Lord our God shall speak to you, and we will hear and do,” ver. 28. And the Lord said, “They have well said all that they have spoken.” But there is a palpable difference between what they spoke, Exo. 19.8, and what they spoke here, relative to their own practice. The former runs thus: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do;” the latter thus: “And we will hear and do;” the original text bears no more. The one relates to obedience only, the other to faith also, — “We will HEAR,” i.e., believe, Isa.55.3; John 9.27. Hence the object of faith, that which is to be believed, is called a report, properly a hearing, Isa. 53.1; Rom. 10.16. The former speaks much blind self-confidence; the latter a sense of duty and a willing mind, but with all a sense of duty, and fear of mismanagement.
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Not merely listen, but listen attentively with a resolve to obey (Mat 7.24-26).
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Deu 18.15-19.
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Making a promise of Christ to them, not only as “the seed of the woman,” but as ‘‘the seed of Abraham,” and yet more particularly, as “the seed of Israel; the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet, from the midst of YOU, of YOUR BRETHREN,” Deu. 18.15. And here it is to be observed that this renewing of the promise and Covenant of Grace with them, was immediately upon the back of giving the law on Mount Sinai; for at that time was their speech which the Lord commended as well spoken: this appears from Exo. 20.18, 19, compared with Deu. 5.23-28, and upon that speech of theirs, that renewal was made, which is clear from Deu. 18.17, 18.
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From the mercy-seat, which was within the tabernacle. The tabernacle was an eminent type of Christ, Heb. 9.11, as the temple was also, John 2.19, 21. So this represented God’s speaking in a Mediator, in Jesus Christ. Here was a change agreeable to the people’s desire on Mount Sinai. God speaks, not from a burning mountain as before, but out of the tabernacle; nor with terrible thunderings as at Sinai, but in a still small voice, intimated to us, and intimated by the extraordinary smallness of one letter in the original word rendered called, as the Hebrew doctors account for that irregularity of writing in that word.
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Moses exceedingly feared and quaked, Heb. 22.21, while he stood among the rest of the Israelites at Mount Sinai during the giving of the law, Exo. 19.25, with chap. 20.21. But here he is represented as Israel’s federal head in this covenant, he being the typical mediator; which plainly intimates the Covenant of Grace to have been made with Christ, and with him in all the elect: “I have made a covenant with you and with Israel,” says the text. — See the first note on the preface, in the Larger Catechism, quest. 31.
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Moses was twice on the Mount with God forty days. During the second forty days he received the order to write, mentioned in Exo. 34.27, as it appears by comparing ver. 27 with 28. This comprehended his writings of the Levitical laws, but not of the Decalogue or Ten Commandments; for God himself wrote these last on tablets of stone, verse 28 compared with verse 1. This peremptory divine order, Moses no doubt obeyed; understanding it of writing in a book, since he was not commanded to write another way. So, in a like case, before he went up into the Mount for the first forty days, he wrote Levitical laws in a book called the Book of the Covenant, Exo. 24.4, 7, “And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord. And he took the book of the covenant and read.” Compare verse 18. This writing also comprehended Levitical laws, but not the Ten Commandments. For all the words of the Lord which Moses wrote, were all the words of the Lord which Moses told the people. And what these were, appears from his commission received for that effect: chap. 20.21, 22, “And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was; and the Lord said to Moses, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel,” etc. So “all the words” were these which follow to the end of the 23d chapter.
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In the original text, {verse 5) they are called emphatically the young men (or ministers, or servants, 1 Sam. 2.13, 15; Esth. 2.2) of the children of Israel, to signify that they were first-born. And so Onkelos reads it, “the first-born of the children of Israel.”
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The blood of the sacrifices representing the precious blood of Christ.