1. And God spoke. I am aware that many agree in reading this verse and the next in connection with each other, and thus making them together the first of the ten commandments.

Ex. 20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. In this commandment God enjoins that He alone should be worshipped, and requires a worship free from all superstition.

4. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. In the First Commandment, after He had taught who was the true God, He commanded that He alone should e worshipped; and now He defines what is His Legitimate Worship.

Ex. 20:7. Thou shalt not take the name. There is a manifest synecdoche in this Commandment; for in order that God may procure for His name its due reverence, He forbids its being taken in vain, especially in oaths.

Ex. 20:8. Remember the Sabbath-day. The object of this Commandment is that believers should exercise themselves in the worship of God; for we know how prone men are to fall into indifference, unless they have some props to lean on or some stimulants to arouse them in maintaining their care and zeal…

10. Thou shalt not do any work. That is, whatever could have been finished yesterday, or postponed till to-morrow. (For instance,) it was not lawful for judges to give a hearing to two litigants; but if any one had violently assaulted his neighbor, it was allowable to prevent the injury, and to…

11. For in six days the Lord made. From this passage it may be probably conjectured that the hallowing of the Sabbath was prior to the Law; and undoubtedly what Moses has before narrated, that they were forbidden to gather the manna on the seventh day, seems to have had its origin from a well-known…

I am not ignorant that the Tables of the Law are usually divided in a different manner; for those, who make only one of the first two Commandments, are obliged finally to mangle the last.

The sum of this Commandment is, that we should not unjustly do violence to any one. In order, however, that God may the better restrain us from all injury of others, He propounds one particular form of it, from which men’s natural sense is abhorrent; for we all detest murder, so as to recoil from…

Although one kind of impurity is alone referred to, it is sufficiently plain, from the principle laid down, that believers are generally exhorted to chastity; for, if the Law be a perfect rule of holy living, it would be more than absurd to give a license for fornication, adultery alone being…

Since charity is the end of the Law, we must seek the definition of theft from thence. This, then, is the rule of charity, that every one’s rights should be safely preserved, and that none should do to another what he would not have done to himself.

God here makes a provision for every man’s character and good name, lest any should be undeservedly weighed down by calumnies and false accusations. The same synecdoche exists here, which I have pointed out in the previous Commandments, for God comprises many things under a single head.

Ex. 20:17. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. There is no question but that this Commandment extends also to those that have preceded it. God had already sufficiently forbidden us to set our hearts on the property of others, to attempt the seduction of their wives, or to seek for gain at…

24. An altar of earth thou shalt make. This precept differs from the other, which I have just explained; because although it refers to the choice of a place, yet the mention of a place is omitted, and it only touches upon the material and form of the altar.

26. Neither shalt thou go up. When God had prescribed modesty to the priests in their whole life, and in their private actions, no wonder that He should require especial care of decency and propriety in the performance of their sacred duties.