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Deuteronomy 5: What the Passage Says

124 claims across 33 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Deuteronomy 5 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Moses gathers all Israel and repeats the terms God gave them at Horeb (Sinai), reminding them that this covenant binds the people standing there that day. He recites the Ten Commandments as God spoke them from the fire, cloud, and thick darkness, and wrote them on two stone tablets. He then recalls how the people, terrified by the voice and the fire, asked Moses to listen for them and report back, and how God approved their request and kept Moses on the mountain to receive the rest of the laws. Moses ends by charging them to follow those commands exactly, turning neither right nor left.

Claim by Claim

  1. 5:1
    • Moses called all Israel together.
    • Moses spoke to them.
    • Moses told Israel to hear the statutes and judgments.
    • Moses said he was speaking these statutes and judgments in their hearing that day.
    • Moses said the purpose was that they learn them.
    • Moses said the purpose was that they keep and do them.
  2. 5:2
    • The LORD our God cut a covenant with us.
    • The covenant was made at Horeb.
  3. 5:3
    • The LORD did not make this covenant with our fathers.
    • The LORD made this covenant with us.
    • All of us here are alive this day.
  4. 5:4
    • The LORD spoke with you face to face.
    • The LORD spoke with you on the mountain.
    • The LORD spoke from the midst of the fire.
  5. 5:5
    • Moses stood between the LORD and the people at that time.
    • Moses stood there to declare to them the word of the LORD.
    • The people were afraid because of the fire.
    • The people did not go up into the mountain.
    • What follows is what was said.
  6. 5:6
    • The speaker says: I am the LORD your God.
    • The LORD brought you out of the land of Egypt.
    • The LORD brought you out of a house of slaves.
  7. 5:7
    • You shall have no other gods before me.
  8. 5:8
    • You shall not make for yourself a carved image.
    • You shall not make any likeness of what is in the heavens above.
    • You shall not make any likeness of what is on the earth beneath.
    • You shall not make any likeness of what is in the waters beneath the earth.
  9. 5:9
    • You shall not bow down to them.
    • You shall not serve them.
    • I the LORD your God am a jealous God.
    • I visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.
    • I visit it upon the third and the fourth generation.
    • This is upon those who hate me.
  10. 5:10
    • I show steadfast love to thousands.
    • The thousands are ambiguous between thousands of persons and a thousand generations.
    • This love is shown to those who love me.
    • This love is shown to those who keep my commandments.
  11. 5:11
    • You shall not take up the name of the LORD your God for emptiness.
    • The LORD will not hold guiltless the one who takes up his name for emptiness.
  12. 5:12
    • Keep the sabbath day to make it holy.
    • This is as the LORD your God commanded you.
  13. 5:13
    • Six days you shall labor.
    • In six days you shall do all your work.
  14. 5:14
    • The seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God.
    • On it you shall not do any work.
    • You yourself shall not work.
    • Your son shall not work.
    • Your daughter shall not work.
    • Your manservant shall not work.
    • Your maidservant shall not work.
    • Your ox shall not work.
    • Your donkey shall not work.
    • None of your cattle shall work.
    • The foreigner within your gates shall not work.
    • The purpose is that your manservant and maidservant may rest as you do.
  15. 5:15
    • You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.
    • The LORD your God brought you out from there.
    • He brought you out with a strong hand.
    • He brought you out with an outstretched arm.
    • For that reason the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
  16. 5:16
    • Honor your father and your mother.
    • This is as the LORD your God commanded you.
    • The purpose is that your days may be long.
    • The purpose is that it may go well with you.
    • This is in the land which the LORD your God is giving you.
  17. 5:17
    • You shall not murder.
  18. 5:18
    • You shall not commit adultery.
  19. 5:19
    • You shall not steal.
  20. 5:20
    • You shall not answer against your neighbor as a false witness.
  21. 5:21
    • You shall not desire your neighbor's wife.
    • You shall not crave your neighbor's house.
    • You shall not crave his field.
    • You shall not crave his manservant.
    • You shall not crave his maidservant.
    • You shall not crave his ox.
    • You shall not crave his donkey.
    • You shall not crave anything that belongs to your neighbor.
  22. 5:22
    • The LORD spoke these words to your whole assembly.
    • He spoke them on the mountain.
    • He spoke from the midst of the fire.
    • He spoke from the cloud.
    • He spoke from the thick darkness.
    • He spoke with a great voice.
    • He added no more.
    • He wrote the words on two tablets of stone.
    • He gave the tablets to Moses.
  23. 5:23
    • You heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness.
    • The mountain was burning with fire.
    • You came near to Moses.
    • All the heads of your tribes came near.
    • Your elders came near.
  24. 5:24
    • You said the LORD our God has shown us his glory.
    • You said the LORD our God has shown us his greatness.
    • You said we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire.
    • You said we have seen this day that God speaks with a human being and that person lives.
  25. 5:25
    • The people asked why they should die now.
    • The people said this great fire will consume them.
    • The people said that if they hear the voice of the LORD their God any longer, they will die.
  26. 5:26
    • The people asked who of all flesh has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the midst of the fire as they had and lived.
  27. 5:27
    • The people told Moses to go near.
    • The people told Moses to hear all that the LORD our God says.
    • The people told Moses to speak to them all that the LORD our God speaks to him.
    • The people said they will hear it.
    • The people said they will do it.
  28. 5:28
    • The LORD heard the sound of your words when you spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD said to Moses that he had heard the sound of the words of this people spoken to him.
    • The LORD said they have done well in all that they have spoken.
  29. 5:29
    • The LORD wished that they would have such a heart in them.
    • The wish is that they would fear him.
    • The wish is that they would keep all his commandments all the days.
    • The purpose is that it might go well with them and with their children forever.
  30. 5:30
    • The LORD told Moses to go and say to them.
    • The message is for them to return to their tents.
  31. 5:31
    • The LORD told Moses to stand here with him.
    • The LORD said he would speak to Moses all the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments.
    • Moses is to teach these to them.
    • They are to do them in the land.
    • The LORD is giving them that land to possess it.
  32. 5:32
    • You shall be careful to do as the LORD your God commanded you.
    • You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.
  33. 5:33
    • You shall walk in all the way the LORD your God commanded you.
    • The purpose is that you may live.
    • The purpose is that it may be well with you.
    • The purpose is that you may prolong your days in the land you will possess.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1
"Statutes and judgments" are two standard Hebrew legal terms: fixed decrees, and rulings of the kind a judge hands down in particular cases. Paired together they are a way of saying "the whole body of law," not two separate collections.
5:2
Horeb is the other name this book uses for the mountain called Sinai elsewhere in the Bible; they refer to the same place. A covenant was a formal, binding agreement of the kind ancient kings made with peoples they ruled or with allies, with stated obligations and stated consequences, closer to a treaty than to a private promise.
5:3
The people Moses is speaking to are largely the children of the generation that stood at Horeb, forty years earlier. The verse deliberately collapses that distance, treating the present audience as the covenant's own partners rather than heirs to someone else's agreement.
5:4
"Face to face" is a Hebrew idiom for direct, in-person dealing, the way one person speaks to another without a go-between. It does not mean the people saw a face; the same book insists they saw no shape at all, only fire.
5:5
This aside sits awkwardly beside the verse before it, which says the LORD spoke to the people directly. Both statements stand in the text as it has come down to us, and the passage does not smooth them together.
5:6
"LORD" printed in capitals is not a translation of a word for a ruler; it stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, written in Hebrew with four consonants (YHWH), which later Jewish practice avoided saying aloud. "God" translates a separate, more general word.
5:7
The Hebrew behind "besides me" is literally "before my face," and its exact force is disputed: it can mean "in addition to me," "in preference to me," or "in my presence." The demand is for exclusive loyalty either way.
5:8
The Hebrew word is for an image cut or carved from wood or stone, the ordinary way gods were represented in the surrounding cultures. "Sky above, earth below, waters under the earth" is the standard ancient description of the whole world in three layers, so the list means "anything anywhere" rather than three separate categories of statue.
5:9
The Hebrew word rendered "jealous" describes a claim that refuses to be shared (the sense a husband or wife has of an exclusive bond), rather than petty envy; it is used in the Bible almost only of God. "Third and fourth generation" reflects a household in which great-grandparents, parents and children could all be alive under one roof, so it means consequences reaching as far as a living family extends.
5:10
The Hebrew word here can mean "thousands" of people or, as many translations take it, a thousand generations; the text is open either way. Whichever is meant, it is set against the "third and fourth generation" of the previous verse as a deliberately lopsided comparison.
5:11
The Hebrew word covers both emptiness and falsehood. In practice it points at swearing an oath in God's name and not meaning it or not keeping it, using the name to back a lie or a worthless promise, as well as using it casually for nothing.
5:12
"Sabbath" comes from a Hebrew verb meaning to stop or cease. "Holy" means set apart from ordinary use, not morally pure. The parallel version of these commandments in Exodus says "Remember the Sabbath day" and grounds it in the creation account; this one says "Keep" and gives a different reason in verse 15.
5:14
The "foreigner" is a resident outsider living long-term among Israelites without land or clan of his own, not a traveler passing through. "Within your gates" means inside your towns, since towns were walled and entered by a gate; the gateway was also where local legal business was done.
5:15
"A strong hand and a powerful arm" is a fixed Hebrew phrase for a display of overwhelming power; very similar wording was used of Egyptian kings in their own inscriptions.
5:16
The Hebrew verb translated "honor" is built on a root meaning "to be heavy", to treat someone as carrying weight. In this setting it includes the practical support and care of aging parents, not only a respectful attitude.
5:17
The King James "thou shalt not kill" is too broad. The Hebrew verb refers to unlawful killing of a person (murder, and in some passages killing through negligence) and is never used of executions, war, or the slaughter of animals, all of which the same law code regulates elsewhere.
5:18
In ancient Israelite law adultery meant sexual relations with another man's wife or fiancée. A married man's involvement with an unmarried woman was handled under different laws, so this command is narrower than the modern English word suggests.
5:19
The Hebrew states no object, simply "you shall not steal." Some scholars have argued that in this list, alongside commands about killing and false testimony, it originally targeted stealing a person, that is kidnapping; the text as it stands leaves it unrestricted.
5:20
This is courtroom language. In a legal system without police or forensic evidence, cases turned almost entirely on witnesses, so lying under oath could directly cost a neighbor his property or his life.
5:21
Deuteronomy uses two different Hebrew verbs here where the Exodus version repeats one, and it puts the wife in a sentence of her own, ahead of the house, rather than listing her among the household's contents. The verbs cover more than a passing wish: they include setting one's sights on something with a view to getting it.
5:22
Hebrew calls this set of commands "the ten words," which is where the term Decalogue comes from; "commandment" is a later label. "Thick darkness" translates a specific word for the dense storm-cloud that regularly accompanies descriptions of God appearing on a mountain. "He added nothing more" marks these as the whole of what the assembled people heard directly.
5:23
"Elders" were not simply old men but the recognized heads of families and clans, who functioned as the local authority, settling disputes, representing the community, and speaking for it.
5:24
The assumption behind this and the next verses, taken for granted throughout the Hebrew Bible, is that direct contact with God is lethal to a human being. Their astonishment is at having survived, not at having heard.
5:26
"All flesh" is a Hebrew idiom for every living creature, used here of humanity in general. "The living God" is a standing title that sets him against images, which cannot speak or act.
5:29
"Fear" in this kind of sentence means awe and serious regard, the response you owe someone with real power over you, not being terrified. The wish that they had "such an heart" refers back to the readiness they just showed in verse 27.
5:30
Israel is camped in tents in the wilderness at this point, so "return to your tents" simply means "go back home", the people are dismissed while Moses remains.
5:31
The laws Moses says he will be given are the ones set out in the long central section of this book. "The land" is Canaan, west of the Jordan; the speech is being delivered on the eastern side, before the people cross over.
5:32
"Turn aside to the right or to the left" is a traveling image: leaving the road. It runs on into the next verse, where obedience is "walking in" the ways God commanded.
5:33
"Walk in all the ways" uses a standard Hebrew image in which the life you live is a road you travel along. "Prolong your days in the land" is about the nation staying put there across generations rather than about any one person's lifespan.

Read Deuteronomy 5