And I stayed in the mount, according to the first time, forty days and forty nights; and the LORD hearkened unto me at that time also, and the LORD would not destroy thee.
Moses here resumes his address, and having made a passing allusion to the principal events in their history, concludes by exhorting them to fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully.
Verse 16. Circumcise ... the foreskin of your heart. Here he teaches them the true and spiritual meaning of that rite, as was afterward more strongly urged by Paul (Romans 2:25-29), and should be applied by us to our baptism, which is "not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God."
Verse 17. For the Lord (Yahweh) your God ... - i:e., He is not merely a local deity, as the pagan regard their guardian divinities; and although, for high and important purposes, He is taking a special interest in the Jewish nation, yet He is the God of all the earth, who, in the exercise of His moral government, knows no national distinctions, and who will not be turned aside from the course of immutable rectitude by any show of liberality or splendour, even in the oblations or the ritual which He has Himself established.
Verse 18,19. He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow. Two powerful motives are here adduced for the cherishing a spirit of benevolence and generous sympathy with the stranger and the destitute-the one drawn from the lessons of their own experience in the school of Egyptian discipline, and from the fact that God exercised a paternal and vigilant care over the helpless, to preserve them from injury, and secure for them the rights of hospitality and justice.
Verse 22. Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons, х bªshib`iym (H7657) nepesh (H5315)] - 70 souls (see the note at Genesis 46:26: cf. Acts 7:14). The view of the divine character exhibited in this passage by the Hebrew legislator is eminently ethical, and the whole religious system of the Israelites 'was erected,' as Hardwick says (2:, 347), 'on their firm belief in the immaculate holiness-that holiness attracting to itself the homage, love, and adoration of a free and grateful people.'