Exodus 20:1
And the Lord spoke all these words:
Open Exodus 20:1 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Locutusque est Dominus cunctos sermones hos :
- Septuagint (Swete)
- Καὶ ἐλάλησεν Κύριος πάντας τοὺς λόγους τούτους λέγων
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיְדַבֵּ֣ר אֱלֹהִ֔ים אֵ֛ת כָּל הַדְּבָרִ֥ים הָאֵ֖לֶּה לֵאמֹֽר
Haydock's commentary
The Lord now, by his angel, delivers in an intelligible manner, the ten words, or commandments, which contain the sum of all the natural law, and may be reduced to the two precepts of charity, Matthew xxii. 40; Mark xii. 31. How these commandments are to be divided into ten, the ancients are not perfectly agreed. We follow the authority of St. Augustine, (9. 71,) St. Clement of Alexandria, (strom. 6,) and others, in referring three of the precepts to God, and seven to our neighbour. Protestants adopt the Jewish method, of making four commandments of the first table, and six of the second; as they divide our first into two, and unite the 9th and 10th; though it surely must appear rational to admit a distinct precept, for an internal as well as for an external object; and the desires of committing adultery or theft, require a distinct prohibition no less than the external actions. Whereas the forbidding to have strange gods, or to worship images, or creatures of any description, is exactly of the same tendency. For no one can worship an idol, without admitting a strange god. The latter part, therefore, of the first commandment, or the second of Protestants, is only a farther explanation of what had gone before, as Moses himself clearly insinuates, ver. 23, You shall not make gods of silver, &c.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Letter LV
22. It is also for this reason, that of all the ten commandments, that which related to the Sabbath was the only one in which the thing commanded was typical; the bodily rest enjoined being a type which we have received as a means of our instruction, but not as a duty binding also upon us. For while in the Sabbath a figure is presented of the spiritual rest, of which it is said in the Psalm, “Be still, and know that I am God,” and unto which men are invited by the Lord Himself in the words, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: so shall ye find rest unto your souls;” as to all the things enjoined in the other commandments, we are to yield to them an obedience in which there is nothing typical. …
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm LXXV
11. Call ye to mind from whence he came to this: “one He humbleth, and another He exalteth.” That which was figured to us in the Gospel through two men, a Pharisee and a Publican, this let us, taking in a wider sense, understand of two peoples, of Jews and of Gentiles: the people of the Jews that Pharisee was, the people of the Gentiles that Publican.…As those by being proud have withdrawn, so these by confessing have drawn near. The cup therefore full of pure wine in the hand of the Lord, as far as the Lord giveth me to understand,…the cup of pure wine full of the mixed, seemeth to me to be the Law, which was given to the Jews, and all that Scripture of the Old Testament, as it is called; there are the weights of all manner of sentences. For therein the New Testament lieth concealed, as though in the dreg of corporal Sacraments. …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).