Deuteronomy 5:3

The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(3) Not . . . with our fathers, but with us.—That is, according to the usage of the Hebrew language in drawing contrasts, not only with our fathers (who actually heard it), but with us also, who were in the loins of our fathers, and for whom the covenant was intended no less than for them; and, in fact, every man who was above forty-two at the time of this discourse might actually remember the day at Sinai.

Benson Commentary

Deuteronomy 5:3. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers — That is, with our remote progenitors, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but with us, their descendants: or if it be understood as spoken of their immediate parents, it means, according to the Hebrew idiom, Not with our fathers only, but with us also, as Genesis 32:28, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; that is, not only Jacob, but Israel, or Israel preferably to Jacob. Moses might truly say, God made this covenant with them then present before him; for a great part of them, even all who were under twenty years of age, when God gave the law on mount Sinai, were at Horeb; and, as God foreknew that their parents would die in the wilderness for their unbelief and murmuring, and would have comparatively little profit from that covenant, he especially intended it for those who should enter Canaan, and who, with their posterity, should be governed and benefited by it from generation to generation.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:1-5 Moses demands attention. When we hear the word of God we must learn it; and what we have learned we must put in practice, for that is the end of hearing and learning; not to fill our heads with notions, or our mouths with talk, but to direct our affections and conduct.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The "fathers" are, as in Deuteronomy 4:37, the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. With them God did indeed make a covenant, but not the particular covenant now in question. The responsibilites of this later covenant, made at Sinai by the nation as a nation, attached in their day and generation to those whom Moses was addressing.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

3. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us—The meaning is, "not with our fathers" only, "but with us" also, assuming it to be "a covenant" of grace. It may mean "not with our fathers" at all, if the reference is to the peculiar establishment of the covenant of Sinai; a law was not given to them as to us, nor was the covenant ratified in the same public manner and by the same solemn sanctions. Or, finally, the meaning may be "not with our fathers" who died in the wilderness, in consequence of their rebellion, and to whom God did not give the rewards promised only to the faithful; but "with us," who alone, strictly speaking, shall enjoy the benefits of this covenant by entering on the possession of the promised land.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

With our fathers; either,

1. Not only with them, the word only being here understood, as it is Genesis 32:28 35:10 1 Samuel 8:7 Jeremiah 7:19 31:34 Matthew 9:13. Or,

2. Not at all with them. But then the word covenant is not here to be taken for the covenant of grace in general, for so it was made with their fathers, Exodus 2:24, but for this particular and mixed dispensation of the covenant at Sinai, as appears both by the foregoing and following words.

All of us here alive this day: he saith not, that all who made that covenant at Sinai are now alive, for many of them were dead, but that this covenant was made with all that are now alive, which is most true, for it was made with the elder sort of them in their own persons, and with the rest in their parents, who did covenant for them; for this phrase,

with us, is put exclusively as to their fathers, but not as to their posterity, as is evident from the nature of the covenant, Acts 2:39, and course of the story.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers,.... That is, not with them only, as Jarchi, Aben Ezra, and Abendana remark; for certain it is that this covenant was made, or law was given, to the immediate fathers of this present generation of Israelites, whose carcasses had fallen in the wilderness; unless this is to be understood of their more remote ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with whom the covenant of grace was made, or afresh made manifest, especially with the former; when the law, the covenant here spoken of, was not delivered until four hundred and thirty years after, Galatians 3:16,

but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day; many of them were then present at the giving of the law, and though under twenty years of age, could remember it, and the circumstances of it; and besides, they were the same people to whom it was given, though not consisting wholly of the same individuals.

Geneva Study Bible

The LORD {a} made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.

(a) Some read, God made not this covenant, that is, in such ample forth and with such signs and wonders.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

3. not … with our fathers] Rather, forefathers, i.e. the Patriarchs—‘those great Grandfathers of thy Church1[119]—with whom, however, D recognises a previous covenant, Deuteronomy 4:31, Deuteronomy 7:12, Deuteronomy 8:18. The immediate fathers of the generation had all passed away before the entry into Moab, according to Deuteronomy 2:14 f. Here it is said emphatically that those with whom the covenant at Ḥoreb had been made were still all—us, all of us—alive here this day. Dillmann meets the contradiction by taking Deuteronomy 2:14 f. as a later gloss. Others find in it a proof of the difference of authorship between the first discourses Deuteronomy 1:6 to Deuteronomy 4:49 and the present series; but this still leaves unsolved the difference within the former between Deuteronomy 1:30 and Deuteronomy 2:14 f. A more probable explanation is that the speaker is made to ignore the tradition of the death of those who had been adults at Ḥoreb (of which the author cannot well have been ignorant) for rhetorical purposes: (1) to emphasise the contrast between the Patriarchs and Israel after the Exodus; and (2) to emphasise the new responsibility which the Ḥoreb covenant had laid on the latter, in all its successive generations. What Dillmann on Deuteronomy 1:30 says of the previous discourse is true of this one (cp. Deuteronomy 11:2-7): ‘In the whole discourse Moses conceives the present generation as identical with the previous one.’

[119] Donne, The Litanie, vii.

Deuteronomy 5:3

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

"Jehovah our God made a covenant with us in Horeb; not with our fathers, but with ourselves, who are all of us here alive this day." The "fathers" are neither those who died in the wilderness, as Augustine supposed, nor the forefathers in Egypt, as Calvin imagined; but the patriarchs, as in Deuteronomy 4:37. Moses refers to the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, which was essentially distinct from the covenant at Sinai, which was essentially distinct from the covenant made with Abraham (Genesis 15:18), though the latter laid the foundation for the Sinaitic covenant. But Moses passed over this, as it was not his intention to trace the historical development of the covenant relation, but simply to impress upon the hearts of the existing generation the significance of its entrance into covenant with the Lord. The generation, it is true, with which God made the covenant at Horeb, had all died out by that time, with the exception of Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, and only lived in the children, who, though in part born in Egypt, were all under twenty years of age at the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, and therefore were not among the persons with whom the Lord concluded the covenant. But the covenant was made not with the particular individuals who were then alive, but rather with the nation as an organic whole. Hence Moses could with perfect justice identify those who constituted the nation at that time, with those who had entered into covenant with the Lord at Sinai. The separate pronoun (we) is added to the pronominal suffix for the sake of emphasis, just as in Genesis 4:26, etc.; and אלּה again is so connected with אנחנוּ, as to include the relative in itself.