Exodus 20:25

20:22-26 Moses having entered into the thick darkness, God there spake in his hearing all that follows from hence to the end of chap. 23, which is mostly an exposition of the ten commandments. The laws in these verses relate to God's worship. The Israelites are assured of God's gracious acceptance of their devotions. Under the gospel, men are encouraged to pray every where, and wherever God's people meet in his name to worship him, he will be in the midst of them; there he will come unto them, and will bless them.

If they chose instead of an earthen one to make one of stone, as they might in rocky places, where they came, and in such an one where they now were, Mount Sinai, under which hill an altar was built, Exodus 24:4 , thou shall not build it of hewn stone; which would require time and occasion expense, to hew and polish them in an artificial way; but it was to be built of rude and unpolished stones, just as they were taken out of the quarry, or found lying by the way, and which were laid up in an heap one upon another, and was done with little trouble, and without any ornament, and easily separated and thrown down, when become useless: the reason of this law, as given by Maimonides (w), is this,"because the idolaters of that time built their altars of hewn stones, therefore God forbad it, lest we should be like them, and that we might shun it in all things, he commanded the altar to be made of earth, as it is said, an altar of earth shalt thou make unto me; and if it could not be made without stones, that the stones should remain in their own natural form, and be neither hewn nor polished; as he after forbad a painted stone, and a plantation of trees by an altar; for in each of these there is one and the same intention and design, namely, that we might not worship him in the same manner in which idolaters used to worship their fictitious deities:" for if thou lift up thy tool upon it; or, thy sword (x); it signifies any tool or instrument made of iron as a sword is, and here such

(25) If thou wilt make me an altar of stone. —Among civilised nations altars were almost always of stone, which superseded earth, as more durable. God does not absolutely prohibit the employment of stone altars by the Israelites, who are found to use them upon certain occasions ( Joshua 8:31 ; 1Kings 18:32 ). He is content to forbid the shaping of the stones by an implement, that so they may not give rise to idolatry. (See Note on Exodus 20:24 .) Thou hast polluted it.—Nature is God’s handiwork, and, therefore, pure and holy. Man, by contact with it, imparts to it of his impurity. The altar, whereby sin was to be expiated, required to be free from all taint of human corruption. For the construction of the altar afterwards sanctioned, see the comment on Exodus 27:1.

An altar of stone in those rocky parts might be as easy for them to make as one of earth. Hewn stone would require both time, and cost, and art. The reasons of this precept are in part the same with the former, Exodus 20:24 . If thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it, by thy disobedience to my express command now given; and howsoever they think to gratify me by this curiosity, I shall not look upon it as a sacred thing, by which the sacrifices offered on it shall be sanctified, but as a profane thing which will defile them. So little doth God value or approve the inventions of men in his worship, how colourable soever they be.

Nothing could be more appropriate as the commencement of the book of the covenant than these regulations for public worship. The rules for the building of altars must have been old and accepted, and are not inconsistent with the directions for the construction of the altar of the court of the tabernacle, Exodus 27:1-8 (compare Joshua 22:26-28 ).

Verse 25. - And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone - i.e. , if, notwithstanding my preference expressed for an altar of earth, thou wilt insist on making me one of stone, as more permanent, and so more honourable, then I require that the stones shall be rough stones shaped by nature, not stones chiselled into shape by the art of man. For if thou lift up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it. It is conjectured with reason that we have here an old traditional idea, which God thought fit under the existing circumstances to sanction. The real object was that altars should not be elaborately carved with objects that might superinduce idolatry. The widely prevalent notion, that nature is sacred, and that all man's interference with nature is a defilement, was made use of economically , to produce the desired result. No tool being allowed to be used, no forms of living creatures could be engraved, and so no idolatry of them could grow up. Exodus 20:25

25 . tool ] The word ( ḥéreb ) commonly rendered ‘sword,’ occasionally used of other sharp instruments, Joshua 5:2-3 (‘knives’): in Deuteronomy 27:5 E ( Joshua 8:31 ) the word is replaced by ‘iron.’ Cf. 1Ma 4:47 . The prohibition may be a survival either from a time when instruments of iron were not in general use, or from the time when the altar was a natural rock or boulder (cf. on v. 24), supposed to be the abode of numen or deity, and it was imagined that to alter its shape would have the effect of driving the numen from it (Nowack, Arch. ii. 17; DB. i. 76a, EB. i. 124). But naturally this is not the belief which actuates the prohibition here. An altar of stones, seemingly unhewn, was built by Elijah ( 1 Kings 18:32 ). it (twice)] The pron. (which is fem. in the Heb.) refers not to ‘altar but to ‘stone’: it is the stone which is profaned by being worked with a tool.