Deuteronomy 5:4

4 God spoke to you personally out of 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 God, our God, made a covenant with us at Horeb.

3 God didn't just make this covenant with our parents; he made it also with us, with all of us who are alive right now.

4 God spoke to you personally out of the fire on the mountain.

5 At the time I stood between God and you, to tell you what God said. You were afraid, remember, of the fire and wouldn't climb the mountain. He said:

6 I am God, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of a house of slaves.