Deuteronomy 4:9

"Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes saw, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; but make them known unto thy children and thy children's children; the day that thou stoodest before Jehovah thy God in Horeb, when Jehovah said unto me, Assemble me the people, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children. And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto heart of heaven, with darkness, cloud, and thick darkness. And Jehovah spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of words, but ye saw no form; only ye heard a voice. And he declared unto you this covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even the ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone. And Jehovah commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and ordinances, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it."

In Deuteronomy 4:9,10 Moses addressed the people as if they personally had stood before the Lord in Horeb, an event that occurred forty years earlier, but this presents no problem whatever. Tens of thousands of the people (over forty years old) who stood before Moses when this was said, were present and vividly remembered what Moses mentioned here. One may only smile at the critical slur that "we are surprised that Moses would speak to his hearers as if they were present to see the theophany!" Indeed, vast numbers of them were present.

"Ye saw no form ..." (Deuteronomy 4:12). This is presented here as an argument against making any kind of an image. If one should attempt to form an image of God, what form could it possibly take? There is powerful theological support here for the specific in the Decalogue, that "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image."

The identification of "the covenant" in this passage with "the ten commandments" (Deuteronomy 4:13) was natural, but it should be understood as a synecdoche in which "the Ten Commandments" stands for all that the Lord had spoken. Failure to observe this truth led in later years, as Cousins declared, "to a superficial and legalistic view of the covenant relationship."[16]

"Two tables of stone ..." (Deuteronomy 4:13). This has been understood throughout the ages as suggesting a division of the commandments into two classifications, for example, (1) duties to God, and (2) duties to man, but the new understanding of Deuteronomy's resemblance to the suzerainty covenant treaties of the Mosaic era tends to raise a question about this. As Cousins noted: "The two tables may have been necessary because of the content; more likely they correspond to the two copies commonly made of treaty documents."[17] Phillips especially favored this reason why there were two tables of stone:

"The Commandments are not to be thought of as written partly on one tablet and partly on the other. Each tablet would have contained all the Commandments. This again reflects the normal practice of the suzerainty treaties under which one copy was retained by the suzerain and the other given to the vassal to deposit in the temple of his god. In Israel's case, both copies were placed in the Ark (Deuteronomy 10:1-5; 31:9,26)."[18]

It is of significance that by both tables being placed in the Ark, their being so placed, "symbolized the permanent presence of God"[19] in the midst of His people Israel.