Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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speaking. God has many ways of speaking to the children of men (Job 33:14); once, yea twice--by his Spirit, by conscience, by providences, by his voice, all which we ought carefully to attend to; but he never spoke, at any time, upon any occasion, as he spoke the ten commandments, which therefore we ought to hear with the more earnest heed. They were not only spoken audibly (so he owned the Redeemer by a voice from heaven, Mt 3:17), but with a great deal of dreadful pomp. This law God had given to man before (it was written in his heart by nature); but sin had so defaced that writing that it was necessary, in this manner, to revive the knowledge of it.
The preface of the Law-maker: I am the Lord thy God, Ex 20:2. Herein,
1. God asserts his own authority to enact this law in general: "I am the Lord who command thee all that follows."
2. He proposes himself as the sole object of that religious worship which is enjoined in the first four of the commandments. They are here bound to obedience by a threefold cord, which, one would think, could not easily be broken.
(1.) Because God is the Lord--Jehovah, self-existent, independent, eternal, and the fountain of all being and power; therefore he has an incontestable right to command us. He that gives being may give law; and therefore he is able to bear us out in our obedience, to reward it, and to punish our disobedience.