Charles Ellicott Commentary Deuteronomy 33:2

"And he said, Jehovah came from Sinai, And rose from Seir unto them; He shined forth from mount Paran, And he came from the ten thousands of holy ones: At his right hand was a fiery law for them." — Deuteronomy 33:2 (ASV)

“And he said, Jehovah came from Sinai,
And dawned upon them from Seir;
He shone forth from Mount Paran.
And there came from the ten thousands of holiness,
From His right hand, a fire of law [10] for them.” (Deuteronomy 33:2)

[10] On this expression, see an additional note at the end of the book.

The appearance of God on Sinai is described as a sunrise. His light rose from Sinai, and the tops of the hills of Seir caught its rays. The full blaze of light shone on Paran. (Compare to Psalms 1:2: “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.”) The statement “He came with ten thousands of saints” is a mere mistranslation. The preposition is from, not with. If the verb “he came,” in the fourth line, is taken to refer to God, we must translate: “He came from ten thousands of saints” (to sinful men).

Rashi takes from to mean part of. “There came some of His ten thousands of saints, but not all of them.” I believe the true translation is what I have given. The law itself was “ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator” (Galatians 3:19). It is called “the word spoken by angels” (Hebrews 2:2). The language of Daniel 7:10—“A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him: thousand thousands ministered unto Him”—supplies a complete parallel. The fiery law came from the ten thousands on “His right hand;” or from them, and from His right hand. This construction is by far the simplest and agrees with what we read elsewhere.

ADDITIONAL NOTE ONDeuteronomy 33:2. “A FIERY LAW.”

The original expression, eshdath or esh dath, sometimes written as one word and sometimes as two, has created some difficulty. Esh is “fire,” and dath, if taken as a distinct word, is “law.”

But dath does not appear elsewhere in the Hebrew of the Old Testament until we meet it in the book of Esther, where it occurs frequently. It is also found in Ezra 8:36. In the Chaldee of Daniel and Ezra, it occurs six times.

Modern authorities assert that it is properly a Persian word. However, since it is found in the Chaldee of Daniel, it was in use among the Chaldeans before the Persian empire. The word has Semitic affinities. The Hebrew syllable thêth would have nearly the same meaning. A datum (or dictum) is the nearest equivalent that we have.

There seems no reason to doubt that the word dath had obtained a place both in Chaldee and in Hebrew at the time of the Captivity. It is perfectly possible that its existence in Chaldee dates very much earlier.

We must remember that Chaldee was the language of the family of Abraham before they adopted Hebrew. “A Syrian ready to perish was my father,” is the confession dictated by Moses in Deuteronomy 26:5.

Syriac and Chaldee in the Old Testament are names of the same language. In the Babylonian captivity, the Jews really returned to their ancestral language. It is therefore quite conceivable that Chaldean words lingered among them until the Exodus; and this word dath, if it is a true Chaldean word, may be an example. However, obviously, these Chaldean reminiscences would have become fewer as the years rolled on.

The three Targums all take dath to be “law” in this place. The Septuagint has “angels” (ἄγγελοι), instead of the combination eshdath. Possibly the word was taken as ashdoth (plural of the Chaldee ashda), meaning “rays” (of light?) and so “angels.” Compare to: “He maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire;” they “ran and returned as a flash of lightning” (Psalms 104:4; Ezekiel 1:14). It is also possible that the Septuagint read r instead of d in the word which they had before them, and that they arrived at the meaning “angels” through the Hebrew word shârath, “to minister.” The confusion between r and d, which are extremely alike in Hebrew, is very common.

The parallels referred to in the notes on the verse show that “fiery law” will yield a good sense. The only question is whether dath, “law,” can be reasonably supposed to have occurred in the Mosaic writings. If the word were at all generally known at that period, to whatever language it properly belonged, it would hardly have escaped such a man as Moses. I think it is quite possible that the common translation may be right. The Hebrew commentators accept it. The only alternative I can suggest is that of the Septuagint, which cannot be verified with certainty.