Deuteronomy 5:3 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Bible Comments

With our fathers; either,

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

Deuteronomy 5:3

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