Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.
Now these are the judgments, х hamishpaaTiym (H4941)] - the statutes, ordinances; Septuagint, ta dikaioomata, ordinances (cf. Hebrews 9:1, where that word is used); rules instituted for regulating the procedure of judges and magistrates in the decision of causes and the trial of criminals. The government of the Israelites being a theocracy, these public authorities were the servants of the Divine Sovereign, and subject to His direction. Most of the laws here noticed were primitive usages, founded on principles of natural equity, and incorporated, with modifications and improvements into the Mosaic code. They are enumerated without strict regard to order, the record comprising, it is presumable, the principal acts ordained for settling the causes which were most frequently brought before the inferior judges, or carried by appeal to the ultimate tribunal of Moses. The parties who brought them seem to have belonged to the lower classes, and accordingly the series begins with detailing the ordinances which related to the personal rights of dependents and servants.
The general tenor of them affords unmistakeable proofs of the rude character and degraded condition of the Israelites, as well as shows what an onerous and difficult duty had devolved on Moses, who was called to undertake the government of such a people. But the very circumstances in which they were-a nation without a country or a settled home, in a rudimentary state, at first a race of pastoral nomads, divided into tribes or clans, and afterward existing in Canaan as simple farmers on their hereditary possessions-facilitated the operation of these laws. Though the enactment of them may have arisen out of circumstances which occurred in the wilderness, yet the influence of the Divine Spirit is discernible in framing ordinances of so general, comprehensive a nature as were suited to the present as well as the prospective and future condition of the Israelites. It appears (Exodus 24:4; Exodus 24:7) that the acts recorded from the beginning of this chapter to Exodus 23:19 were an expansion, a practical development of the Ten Commandments, which constituted the basis of the national covenant; and they, too, though detached ordinances, are so associated and ranged together as to form groups of ten, after the model of the Decalogue.