In Deuteronomy, chapter five, verse two, Israel’s salvation was a divine gift given, according to God’s covenant agreement. He would adopt the Israelites as His sons and daughters to care for them and bless them so they might live long in the land God gave them, as indicated in chapter four, verse forty. In a grateful response, Israel was to accept God as their Lord to be worshipped, loved, honored and obeyed in living faith.
God made a covenant with Moses and the Israelites in Horeb. Not with the fathers but with the younger generation, who were alive during that time. The forefathers are those who died in the wilderness. Moses refers to the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, which was essentially distinct from the covenant at Sinai, which was apparent from the covenant made with Abraham. However, the latter laid the foundation for the Sinaitic covenant. Yet, Moses passed over this, for it was not his intention to trace the historical development of the covenant relation. However, the impression upon the hearts of the existing generation is significant.
The generation, it is true, with which God made the covenant at Horeb had all died out by that time, except for Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, and only lived in the children, who, though in part born in Egypt, were all under twenty years of age after the covenant at Sinai. Therefore were not among the persons with whom the Lord concluded the covenant. However, the covenant was not with particular individuals who were then alive but with the nation as an organic whole. Hence, Moses could justifiably identify those who constituted the nation. At that time, with those who had entered into a covenant with the Lord at Sinai.