(9) Thou shalt not commit adultery.--It will be seen that in this arrangement the seventh commandment precedes the sixth. The same arrangement is found in Mark 10:19, Luke 18:20, and James 2:11. On the other hand, the ordinary arrangement appears in Matthew 19:18. There can be no doubt that St. Paul followed an order that was found in the copies of the LXX. that he was in the habit of using. The famous Codex Vaticanus still presents the same order in Deuteronomy 5:17. In Exodus 20:13-15 it places the seventh commandment, first, then the eighth, then the sixth.

13:8-10 Christians must avoid useless expense, and be careful not to contract any debts they have not the power to discharge. They are also to stand aloof from all venturesome speculations and rash engagements, and whatever may expose them to the danger of not rendering to all their due. Do not keep in any one's debt. Give every one his own. Do not spend that on yourselves, which you owe to others. But many who are very sensible of the trouble, think little of the sin, of being in debt. Love to others includes all the duties of the second table. The last five of the ten commandments are all summed up in this royal law, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; with the same sincerity that thou lovest thyself, though not in the same measure and degree. He that loves his neighbour as himself, will desire the welfare of his neighbour. On this is built that golden rule, of doing as we would be done by. Love is a living, active principle of obedience to the whole law. Let us not only avoid injuries to the persons, connexions, property, and characters of men; but do no kind or degree of evil to any man, and study to be useful in every station of life.For this, thou shalt not commit adultery,.... The apostle here reckons up the several laws of the second table, with this view, that it might appear that so far as a man loves his neighbour, whether more near or distantly related, he fulfils the law, or acts according to it. He omits the first of these, the fifth commandment, either because he had urged this before, so far as it may be thought to regard magistrates; or because, according to the division of the Jews, who reckon five commands to each table, this belonged to the first: and he puts the seventh before the sixth, which is of no great moment; the order of things being frequently changed in the Scripture, and which is often done by Jewish writers, in alleging and citing passages of Scripture; and with whom this is a maxim, , "that there is no first nor last in the law" (c); that is, it is of no importance which stands first or last in it: it follows,

thou shall not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet; which are the sixth, eighth, ninth, and tenth commands of the decalogue, Exodus 20:13,

and if there be any other commandment; of God, respecting the neighbour, either in the decalogue, as there was the fifth, Exodus 20:12, or elsewhere, the apostle repeating this by memory:

it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself; see Leviticus 19:18; this is the summary and epitome of them; so Christ reduces the laws of the first table to the head of love to God, and those of the second to the head of love to the neighbour, Matthew 22:37, as the apostle does here, and in Galatians 5:14, and the Apostle James, in James 2:8.

(c) T. Bab. Pesachim, fol. 6. 2.