Deuteronomy 5:4

4 Face to face on the mountain from the midst of the fire Jehovah spoke with you

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 Jehovah our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.

3 Not with our fathers did Jehovah make this covenant, but with us, [even] us, those [who are] here alive all of us this day.

4 Face to face on the mountain from the midst of the fire Jehovah spoke with you

5 (I stood between Jehovah and you at that time, to declare to you the word of Jehovah; for ye were afraid by reason of the fire, and went not up to the mountain), saying,

6 I am Jehovah thy God who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.