Week 8 Deuteronomy
While I’m reading through Deuteronomy I don’t have much time to be flipping back-and-forth checking and comparing marginal notes and cross-references to Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers. If I did I know I’d find quite a few things in Deuteronomy I’ve read before.
Anyway one section I did take time to compare was the two versions of the Ten Commandments. I got out a beat-up old paperback bible that’s breaking apart in sections along the spine and set the 134-page section containing Exodus alongside my intact bible and compared the two Ten Commandments. Everything is pretty much word-for-word. Except the Sabbath commandment. It’s a long commandment – four-verses long – and the first three verses in the Exodus-version and the Deuteronomy-version are very similar. The thing that’s different is the reason Moses gives for keeping the seventh-day special.
Exodus’ reason is: for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them and rested on the Sabbath.
But Deuteronomy says: you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
The Exodus reason for Sabbath is that it’s a kind of End-of-Creation Memorial Day. Deuteronomy is different – on the Sabbath remember you were once a slave. Now you’re a free man.
Note: quotes from Exodus 20:11 & Deuteronomy 5:15 (NASB)