Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
Download the book in PDF, ePub, Kindle for a complete version.
The people unanimously consented to the terms proposed, without reservation or exception: All the words which the Lord hath said will we do. They had before consented in general to be under God's government (Ex 19:8); here they consent in particular to these laws now given. O that there had been such a heart in them! How well were it if people would but be always in the same good mind that sometimes they seem to be in! Many consent to the law, and yet do not live up to it; they have nothing to except against it, and yet will not persuade themselves to be ruled by it.
4 And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early
in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. How it was engrossed in the book of the covenant: Moses wrote the words of the Lord (Ex 24:4), that there might be no mistake; probably he had written them as God dictated them on the mount. As soon as ever God had separated to himself a peculiar people in the world, he governed them by a written word, as he has done ever since, and will do while the world stands and the church in it. Moses, having engrossed the articles of agreement concluded upon between God and Israel, read them in the audience of the people (Ex 24:7), that they might be perfectly apprised of the thing, and might try whether their second thoughts were the same with their first, upon the whole matter. And we may suppose they were so; for their words (Ex 24:7) are the same with what they were (Ex 24:3), but something stronger: All that the Lord hath said (be it good, or be it evil, to flesh and blood, Jer 42:6) we will do; so they had said before, but now they add, "And will be obedient; not only we will do what has been commanded, but in every thing which shall further be ordained we will be obedient." Bravely resolved! If they had but stuck to their resolution. See here that God's covenants and commands are so incontestably equitable in themselves, and so highly advantageous to us, that the more we think of them, and the more plainly and fully they are set before us, the more reason we shall see to comply with them.