Exodus 20:12

This is the 'first commandment with promise' (Ephesians 6:2). The promise has been understood by some as applying to the nation as a whole. Undoubtedly the nation takes its character from the home, and well-ordered family life is the prime condition of national welfare and stability: see on Deuteronomy 21:18. But the promise is also to the individual. 'Righteousness tendeth to life' (Proverbs 11:19). A promise of long life and material prosperity is frequently attached in OT. to moral precepts: see e.g. Deuteronomy 23:25; Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 7:12; Psalms 1; Psalms 34:12; Psalms 37. The doctrine of present rewards and punishments had an important educative value at a time when the truth of a future life was not yet clearly revealed. But the manifest exceptions which experience of human life afforded to this simple view of the divine government proved a great trial to faith, as the book of Job in particular shows, and such passages as Psalms 73 Jeremiah 12:1, etc. That faith was able even in these circumstances to triumph over doubt is shown e.g. in Habakkuk 3:17; Psalms 73:23, in which it may be said that the high-water mark is reached of a trust in God that is superior to and independent of all outward circumstances. In later times, when the belief in a future life was more consistently held, it was only natural that the rewards and penalties should be regarded as in many cases postponed to find their full completion in the next world: see on Deuteronomy 2:7.

13-16. These commandments are given to safeguard a man's life, domestic peace, property, and reputation. For the way in which our Lord extended the scope of the sixth and seventh commandments so as to apply not merely to the outward act but to the inner thought and motive lying at its root, see Matthew 5:21