(4) The Lord talked with you face to face.--Yet they saw no manner of similitude (Deuteronomy 4:12), i.e., no visible form: but the very words of God reached their ears. So in Exodus 20:22, "Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven."

Verses 4, 5. - The Lord talked with you face to face. God spoke to them immediately, in their presence and to their face, from the mount, as one person might to another. There is a slight difference in form between the phrase here and that in Exodus 33:11 and Deuteronomy 34:10, where it is used in reference to Moses, but it is so slight (בְּפָּנִים instead of אֶל־פָּנִים) that no difference of meaning can be elicited. God spake directly to the people, as he did to Moses, only Moses was admitted to closer communion with him than the people were. This difference is sufficiently indicated in ver. 5, where the mediatory function of Moses, in the promulgation of the Law and the making of the covenant, is described as necessitated by the fear of the people, and their not going up into the mount (cf. Exodus 19:19, etc.). This is referred to more fully afterwards (ver. 23, etc.). I stood between the Lord and you; i.e. acted as mediator; LXX., εἱστήκειν ἀνὰ μέσον (cf. Galatians 3:19).

5:1-5 Moses demands attention. When we hear the word of God we must learn it; and what we have learned we must put in practice, for that is the end of hearing and learning; not to fill our heads with notions, or our mouths with talk, but to direct our affections and conduct.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, Exodus 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.