5:1-5 - Moses summoned all Israel and said: Hear, O Israel, the decrees and the laws I declare in your hearing today. Learn them and be sure to follow them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. It was not with our fathers that the Lord made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. The Lord spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain. (At that time I stood between the Lord and you to declare to you the word of the Lord, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.) And he said:
Moses begins with a call—similar to the one he had made in his conclusion to his First Address (see 4:1)—to "all Israel" to radical faithfulness: to hear, to learn and to obey the "decrees and laws" that he is now declaring to them (v1). The "decrees and laws" in this context consist not only of the Ten Commandments that he would soon reiterate, but everything that is found in the rest of the Second Address. The basis for his call comes from the fact that Israel stands in covenantal commitment to Yahweh; "Yahweh had made a covenant with us at Horeb" (v2). This introductory summon is indeed crafted to emphasize the fact that Israel, and GenB in particular, stands in covenant:
A. You: "Hear the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today." v1,
B. Us: "Yahweh made a covenant with us," v2,
C. Not our Fathers: "it was not with our fathers that Yahweh made the covenant," v3a,
B'. Us: "but with us, with all of us who are alive here today," v3b,
A'. You: "Yahweh spoke to you face to face . . . " v4.
The expression "made a covenant" is literally "cut a covenant." The expression, many scholars think, arose from a covenant-making ceremony in which animals were slain and cut in two and the parties passed between the pieces, with the idea that if a party should violate the terms of the covenant so established then he would be treated as the slain animal (see, e.g., Gen 15:9-21; Jer 34:12-20, esp. v18). If some among GenB (especially those who were born during the years of wandering around in the wilderness) might be tempted to object that since the covenant was made at Horeb (Sinai) it, therefore, had nothing to do with them, Moses is categorical in his insistence—as elsewhere in Deuteronomy—that the covenant's validity and authority transcends all generations and now places GenB under its claim. The hyperbolic denial of the negative statement ("it was not with our fathers that Yahweh made this covenant") is now contrasted by an emphatic positive assertion introduced by the emphatic adversative, ki, "but" ("but it is with us"). This us-ness is now underscored in almost staccato style, by four qualifiers: "these of us" ('anachenu 'elleh, lit. "we, these"), "here" (poh), "today" (hayyom), "all of us who are alive," (kullanu chayyim). The hark back to Yahweh speaking "to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain" (v4) powerfully reminds GenB of the reality—the irrefutability and immediacy—of that experience.
Having ranged from Horeb to the present on the plains of Moab ("here") Moses now takes Israel back to Horeb and the past to remind them of how Yahweh had spoken to them (specifically GenA) "face to face out of fire on the mountain" (v4). The expression "face to face" should not be taken literally; the thrust is, rather, on the directness of that experience at Horeb. At first glance, v4 seems parenthetical and contradictory to v5. The narrative is satisfied to leave the puzzle as it is at this point (things begin to clear up slightly when it returns to this event in vv22-27). Nonetheless, it makes the important point that, though their experience was so dramatically immediate, nonetheless, Moses was the one who, ultimately, stood between them and Yahweh to serve as their mediator.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2017