1 And God spake all these words, saying,

2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

We now come to one of the most famous passages in all of the Bible: the laying down of the ten commandments. Interestingly, God does not Himself refer to these as “the Ten Commandments.” That title is not spoken out loud by either God or Moses, but was written out by a scribe in Exodus 34:28. As such, in the following verses we will see that the commandments are not explicitly numbered, they don’t all receive equal explanation, and the point where the first commandment ends and the second begins can sometimes be confusing to detect. Regardless, I will proceed through them one at a time, giving each a discussion on their meaning, significance, and application.

Before that, though, we have this introduction from the Lord. He prefaces these core commandments with the declaration that “I am the Lord thy God.” These aren’t the words of Moses, they aren’t the opinions of any man, they are the mandate of the divine.

God continues with His introduction, reminding the Israelites that He is the one that “brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” They were prisoners and He freed them when no one else could. He hadn’t come only to free them from the Egyptians, though, but also from their own vices and frailties. These commandments would be a continuation of His freeing, ensuring that the weak and the naive would not be left to the mercy of the murderer, the thief, or the false accuser.

In short, the Israelites had been freed for a purpose, and it was so that they could submit themselves to their true and benevolent Master, whose commandments these were.