Deuteronomy 5:3

Deu 5:3 The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, [even] us, who [are] all of us here alive this day.

Ver. 3. With our fathers,] i.e., With our fathers only. Or if it be understood of all the foregoing patriarchs, then it is to be expounded by Gal 3:17.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Deu 5:3. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers — That is, with our remote progenitors, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but with us, their descendants: or if it be understood as spoken of their immediate parents, it means, according to the Hebrew idiom, Not with our fathers only, but with us also, as Gen 32:28, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; that is, not only Jacob, but Israel, or Israel preferably to Jacob. Moses might truly say, God made this covenant with them then present before him; for a great part of them, even all who were under twenty years of age, when God gave the law on mount Sinai, were at Horeb; and, as God foreknew that their parents would die in the wilderness for their unbelief and murmuring, and would have comparatively little profit from that covenant, he especially intended it for those who should enter Canaan, and who, with their posterity, should be governed and benefited by it from generation to generation.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Some read, God made not this covenant, that is, in such ample forth and with such signs and wonders.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us--The meaning is, "not with our fathers" only, "but with us" also, assuming it to be "a covenant" of grace. It may mean "not with our fathers" at all, if the reference is to the peculiar establishment of the covenant of Sinai; a law was not given to them as to us, nor was the covenant ratified in the same public manner and by the same solemn sanctions. Or, finally, the meaning may be "not with our fathers" who died in the wilderness, in consequence of their rebellion, and to whom God did not give the rewards promised only to the faithful; but "with us," who alone, strictly speaking, shall enjoy the benefits of this covenant by entering on the possession of the promised land.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 3. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers (only) but with us (also.)

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(3) Not . . . with our fathers, but with us.—That is, according to the usage of the Hebrew language in drawing contrasts, not only with our fathers (who actually heard it), but with us also, who were in the loins of our fathers, and for whom the covenant was intended no less than for them; and, in fact, every man who was above forty-two at the time of this discourse might actually remember the day at Sinai.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

3. not … with our fathers] Rather, forefathers, i.e. the Patriarchs—‘those great Grandfathers of thy Church1[119]—with whom, however, D recognises a previous covenant, Deu_4:31, Deu_7:12, Deu_8:18. The immediate fathers of the generation had all passed away before the entry into Moab, according to Deu_2:14 f. Here it is said emphatically that those with whom the covenant at Ḥoreb had been made were still all—us, all of us—alive here this day. Dillmann meets the contradiction by taking Deu_2:14 f. as a later gloss. Others find in it a proof of the difference of authorship between the first discourses Deu_1:6 to Deu_4:49 and the present series; but this still leaves unsolved the difference within the former between Deu_1:30 and Deu_2:14 f. A more probable explanation is that the speaker is made to ignore the tradition of the death of those who had been adults at Ḥoreb (of which the author cannot well have been ignorant) for rhetorical purposes: (1) to emphasise the contrast between the Patriarchs and Israel after the Exodus; and (2) to emphasise the new responsibility which the Ḥoreb covenant had laid on the latter, in all its successive generations. What Dillmann on Deu_1:30 says of the previous discourse is true of this one (cp. Deu_11:2-7): ‘In the whole discourse Moses conceives the present generation as identical with the previous one.’

[119] Donne, The Litanie, vii.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Lord talked with you face to face in the mount,.... Meaning, not in that free, friendly, and familiar manner, in which he sometimes talked with Moses, of whom this phrase is used, Exo 33:11, but publicly, audibly, clearly, and distinctly, or without the interposition of another; he did not speak to them by Moses, but to them themselves; he talked to them without a middle person between them, as Aben Ezra expresses it: without making use of one to relate to them what he said; but he talked to them directly, personally:

out of the midst of the fire; in which he descended, and with which the mountain was burning all the time he was speaking; which made it very awful and terrible, and pointed at the terrors of the legal dispensation.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

The “fathers” are, as in Deu 4:37, the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. With them God did indeed make a covenant, but not the particular covenant now in question. The responsibilites of this later covenant, made at Sinai by the nation as a nation, attached in their day and generation to those whom Moses was addressing.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Fathers, the ancient patriarchs, who were not favoured in such a signal manner. (Menochius) --- Though many of those who had heard the words of God at Horeb, were dead, and had not enjoyed the full benefit of the covenant, some still remained, and the children of the deceased were about to enter the land which had been there promised. (Haydock) --- God did not make a covenant with the Patriarchs only, but also with their posterity at Horeb. (Du Hamel)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

With our fathers; either,

1. Not only with them, the word only being here understood, as it is Gen 32:28; 35:10; 1Sa 8:7; Jer 7:19; 31:34; Mat 9:13. Or,

2. Not at all with them. But then the word covenant is not here to be taken for the covenant of grace in general, for so it was made with their fathers, Exo 2:24, but for this particular and mixed dispensation of the covenant at Sinai, as appears both by the foregoing and following words.

All of us here alive this day: he saith not, that all who made that covenant at Sinai are now alive, for many of them were dead, but that this covenant was made with all that are now alive, which is most true, for it was made with the elder sort of them in their own persons, and with the rest in their parents, who did covenant for them; for this phrase,

with us, is put exclusively as to their fathers, but not as to their posterity, as is evident from the nature of the covenant, Act 2:39, and course of the story.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

3. Not… with our fathers — Not with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the covenant of which Moses speaks made, but with their descendants who came up out of the land of bondage. A covenant had been made with their fathers, but this covenant was made at Sinai, and, though nearly forty years had passed, there were those among the hearers who could recall the scenes connected with its announcement.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Not with our fathers - Only: but with us, who are all alive - He saith not, that all who made the covenant at Sinai are now alive, but this covenant was made with all that are now alive; which is most true, for it was made with the elders in their persons, and with the rest in their parents, who covenanted for them.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

לא את אבתינו NOT WITH OUR FATHERS — i.e. not with them alone, כרת ה׳ וגו׳ DID THE LORD MAKE [THIS COVENANT], כי אתנו BUT WITH US etc.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.