Commentaries:
Barnes' Notes
Compare Exodus 20 and notes.
Moses here adopts the Ten Words as a ground from which he may proceed to reprove, warn, and exhort; and repeats them, with a certain measure of freedom and adaptation. Our Lord Mark 10:19 and Paul Ephesians 6:2-3 deal similarly with the same subject. Speaker and hearers recognized, however, a statutory and authoritative form of the laws in question, which, because it was familiar to both parties, needed not to be reproduced with verbal fidelity.
Deuteronomy 5:12-15
The exhortation to observe the Sabbath and allow time of rest to servants (compare Exodus 23:12) is pointed by reminding the people that they too were formerly servants themselves. The bondage in Egypt and the deliverance from it are not assigned as grounds for the institution of the Sabbath, which is of far older date (see Genesis 2:3), but rather as suggesting motives for the religious observance of that institution. The Exodus was an entrance into rest from the toils of the house of bondage, and is thought actually to have occurred on the Sabbath day or "rest" day.
Deuteronomy 5:16
The blessing of general well-being here annexed to the keeping of the fifth commandment, is no real addition to the promise, but only an amplification of its expression.
Deuteronomy 5:21
The "field" is added to the list of objects specifically forbidden in the parallel passage Exodus 20:17. The addition seems very natural in one who was speaking with the partition of Canaan among his hearers directly in view.
Other Barnes' Notes entries containing Deuteronomy 5:18:
Exodus 20:1-17
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