Deuteronomy 5:4

face to face i.e. person with person, without the intervention of another. The metaphor is hardly an instance of the tendency of D's style to hyperbole 2 [120]. For although all that the people perceived was a voice, or sound, of words(Deuteronomy 4:12), this came at first directlyto the whole people, and it was because they feared the effect of its directnessthat they begged Moses to mediate (Deuteronomy 5:22). But if not a hyperbole the phrase face to faceneeds qualification it was only with Moses that God talked (morally speaking) face to face (Deuteronomy 34:10; Exodus 33:11); and so a qualification is given immediately in parenthesis in the next verse.

[120] It is, however, an interesting illustration of how an O.T. writer (like so many of the prophets), while forbidding strenuously the representation of the Deity in any material form, does not hesitate to use anthropomorphisms in describing His appearances to men. Ch. Deuteronomy 4:12; Deuteronomy 4:15 emphasise that Israel saw no manner of form in the Mount; while Deuteronomy 5:4 now asserts that God spake face to facewith the people. What is denied in fact, so as to exclude every excuse for plastic representations of the Deity, is allowed in metaphor.

out of the midst of the fire So in Deuteronomy 4:12 (but without the phrase preceding in the mount), 15, 33, 36; and Deuteronomy 5:22; Deuteronomy 5:24; Deuteronomy 9:10; Deuteronomy 10:4.