(14) Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark.--Another law manifestly appropriate here, where it appears for the first time, like the "field" in the tenth commandment (Deuteronomy 5:21). But the immediate connection is not obvious. Perhaps the idea is to caution the people to avoid a most certain incentive to hatred and murder. Ancient landmarks are also important and almost sacred witnesses.
They of old time.--The first dividers of the land. There is no idea of antiquity about the expression.
Verse 14. - To the ordinance concerning cities of refuge Moses appends one prohibiting the removing of landmarks; if these had been placed by a man's ancestors to mark the boundaries of possessions, they were not to be surreptitiously altered. Landmarks were held sacred, and a curse is pronounced against those who remove them (Deuteronomy 27:7; cf. Job 24:2; Proverbs 22:28; Proverbs 23:10; Hosea 5:10). Among other nations also landmarks were regarded as sacred (cf. Plato, 'De Legibus,' 8. p. 842; Dionys. Halic. 2:17; Plutarch, 'Numa,' 16; Ovid, 'Fast.,' 2:639). Verse 14. - They of old time; i.e. those of a former age (רִאשֹׁנִים, earlier ones, ancestors, predecessors). The word does not necessarily imply that the age described as "former" was removed at a great distance in the past; it might designate men of the immediately preceding age. The LXX. have here οἱ πατέρες, and the Vulgate priores. That the law here given was uttered whilst Israel was yet outside of Canaan, is evident from what follows in this verse.
19:14 Direction is given to fix landmarks in Canaan. It is the will of God that every one should know his own; and that means should be used to hinder the doing and suffering of wrong. This, without doubt, is a moral precept, and still binding. Let every man be content with his own lot, and be just to his neighbours in all things.
Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark,.... By which one man's land is distinguished from another; for so to do is to injure a man's property, and alienate his lands to the use of another, which must be a very great evil, and render those that do it obnoxious to a curse, Deuteronomy 27:17.
which they of old have set in thine inheritance, which thou shall inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it; the land of Canaan: this is thought to refer to the bounds and limits set in the land by Eleazar and Joshua, and those concerned with them at the division of it; when not only the tribes were bounded; and distinguished by certain marks, but every man's estate, and the possession of every family in every tribe which though not as yet done when this law was made, yet, as it respects future times, might be said to be done of old, whenever there was any transgression of it, which it cannot be supposed would be very quickly done; and it is a law not only binding on the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, but all others, it being agreeably to the light and law of nature, and which was regarded among the Heathens, Proverbs 22:28.
They of old time.--The first dividers of the land. There is no idea of antiquity about the expression.
which they of old have set in thine inheritance, which thou shall inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it; the land of Canaan: this is thought to refer to the bounds and limits set in the land by Eleazar and Joshua, and those concerned with them at the division of it; when not only the tribes were bounded; and distinguished by certain marks, but every man's estate, and the possession of every family in every tribe which though not as yet done when this law was made, yet, as it respects future times, might be said to be done of old, whenever there was any transgression of it, which it cannot be supposed would be very quickly done; and it is a law not only binding on the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, but all others, it being agreeably to the light and law of nature, and which was regarded among the Heathens, Proverbs 22:28.