Deuteronomy 5:4

4 ADONAI spoke with you face to face from the fire on the mountain.

Deuteronomy 5:4 Meaning and Commentary

Deuteronomy 5:4

The Lord talked with you face to face in the mount
Meaning, not in that free, friendly, and familiar manner, in which he sometimes talked with Moses, of whom this phrase is used, ( Exodus 33:11 ) , but publicly, audibly, clearly, and distinctly, or without the interposition of another; he did not speak to them by Moses, but to them themselves; he talked to them without a middle person between them, as Aben Ezra expresses it: without making use of one to relate to them what he said; but he talked to them directly, personally:

out of the midst of the fire;
in which he descended, and with which the mountain was burning all the time he was speaking; which made it very awful and terrible, and pointed at the terrors of the legal dispensation.

Deuteronomy 5:4 In-Context

2 ADONAI our God made a covenant with us at Horev.

3 ADONAI did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us -with us, who are all of us here alive today.

4 ADONAI spoke with you face to face from the fire on the mountain.

5 At that time I stood between ADONAI and you in order to tell you what ADONAI was saying; because, on account of the fire, you were afraid and wouldn't go up onto the mountain. He said, t

6 "'I am ADONAI your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you lived as slaves. c