1. Though torah is properly a foreign word, it holds such distinctiveness it is worth importing into the English language as a word in itself, in contrast to substituting it with "law." The word will be used in the commentary as if it is an English word and not printed in italic.
2. See, e.g., the extended encomium to the law in Psm.119. Modern Jews shows a similar attitude towards the law and celebrates the cycles of its reading in the synagogues with the festival of Simchat Torah ("Joy of the Law"), where the members—women included—embrace the scroll of the Torah (which is normally treated with sacrosanctity) and dance with it, passing it from one person to another.
3. B. K. Waltke, with Charles Yu, Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 405, n1.
4. P. Enns "Law of God," NIDOTTE, 4:897. H.-H. Esser, "Law," NIDNTT, 2:440, concurs; he says that torah "frequently does not mean 'law' in the modern sense of the term" (emphasis his).
5. J. P. Burgess, "Reformed Explication of the Ten Commandments," in W. P. Brown, ed., The Ten Commandments: The Reciprocity of Faithfulness, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004),98.