Prof. Stowe on the Decalogue.
PROF. C. E. STOWE, D. D., is writing a series of articles in The Christian Union, on the “Revision of the English Bible.” In his number 2, published in the Union of June 25, 1870, we find the following on the Decalogue: Our translators have sometimes erred by not giving a literal translation of the Hebrew in cases where a literal rendering would be much more striking and emphatic than the rendering which they have adopted. For example, in respect to the Decalogue, they often write the Ten Commandments where it is in Hebrew, THE TEN WORDS. Both phrases occur in the Hebrew, and it would have been much better in both cases to adhere to the literal rendering. This is not trifling, for Moses asserts that THE TEN WORDS differ from all the rest of the Pentateuch, because they were written directly by the finger of God, and not by Moses as God's amanuensis, which was the case with the other portions of the Pentateuch. Let the reader carefully compare the following texts: Ex. 17: 14, 24; 12: 31; 18: 32; 15: 16; 34: 28; Deut. 4: 13; 5: 22; 10: 1-5; 9: 10, 11. Ex. 20: 1-20. In these passages it is explicitly asserted that the Decalogue, The Ten Commandments, as we generally term it, but THE TEN WORDS, as is generally in the Hebrew, differ from all the rest of the Mosaic Law, in that they were spoken with an audible voice, amid thunderings and lightnings and the sound of trumpets, in the hearing of all the people, by God himself, which was not the case in regard to any other portion of the law; that they were engraven by God himself on the two tables of stone, and not by Moses as his amanuensis, as all other portions of the law were. Thus THE TEN WORDS stand out by themselves, distinct from all the other words of the law; and the fact is very carefully noted in the original record; but the impression of it is very much weakened to the English reader by the failure of our translators to give a literal rendering. Deut. 10: 4, literally translated, reads thus: “He wrote on the tables according to the first writing THE TEN WORDS, which the Lord spake unto you in the mount out of the midst of the fire.” Compare Ex. 31: 18: “Two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God;” and Ex. 17: 14, “The Lord said to Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book.” Moses was himself to write the Pentateuch at the dictation of God, but not THE TEN WORDS. They were written directly by God himself, without the intervention of an amanuensis, and they were so written twice over, and that is the only portion51of the Bible that ever was so written. The mysterious writing in Dan. 5: 25, was, all admit, by the intervention of an angel. The TEN WORDS are all in their own nature of perpetual obligation; they do not belong exclusively to the Mosaic code, and an English translation, literally exact, would have done much to prevent the mistake made by so many in regard to the perpetual obligation of the Sabbath, which, as to its essence, was established at the creation, and will continue till the end of time.