The Mountain and the Ten Words

Word traveled through the desert about everything God had done for Israel, and Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, heard it. So he came out to the camp, bringing Moses’ wife and his two sons with him. Moses went out to meet him and bowed low and kissed him, and brought him into his tent, and told him the whole story from beginning to end. And Jethro said, “Blessed be the Lord, who has pulled his people out of the hand of Egypt! Now I know that the Lord is great above all the gods.” The next day Jethro watched Moses at work. From morning until evening Moses sat all alone, deciding every argument for the whole camp, while the people stood in a line that never ended. And Jethro said, “What you are doing is not right. You will wear yourself out, and these people with you. It is too heavy for you — you cannot do it alone. Choose good men out of the people, men who fear God and hate a bribe, and put them over thousands and hundreds and fifties and tens. Let them judge the small matters, and bring only the hard ones to you. Then you will be able to keep going, and all these people will get home in peace.” And Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything he said. He chose good men out of all Israel and set them over the people, and from then on the load was shared. Then Jethro said goodbye and went home to his own country.

Three months after they walked out of Egypt, the children of Israel came into the wilderness of Sinai, and there they camped in front of a great mountain. And Moses climbed up the mountain, and God called to him and said, “Tell the children of Israel: you have seen for yourselves what I did to the Egyptians, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you will really listen to my voice and keep my covenant — my forever promise — then out of all the peoples on the earth you will be my own.” So Moses came down and called the elders and told them every word. And all the people answered together with one voice: “Everything the Lord has said, we will do.” And the Lord said to Moses, “Get the people ready. Let them wash their clothes and be ready for the third day — for on the third day I will come down on the mountain where all the people can see. And set a line around the mountain: nobody is to climb it or even touch it.”

And on the third morning it began. There was thunder, and lightning, and a heavy dark cloud lying on the mountain, and the sound of a trumpet blowing loud and long — and every person in the camp shook with fear. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. And the whole mountain was covered in smoke, because God had come down on it in fire, and the smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace, and the mountain shook. The trumpet grew louder and louder. Moses spoke, and God answered him with a voice. And out of the fire and the cloud, God spoke his words to all the people:

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slaves. You are to have no other gods but me. You are not to make yourself an idol — nothing shaped like anything in the sky above, or on the earth below, or in the water under the earth — and you are not to bow down to them or serve them. You are not to use the name of the Lord your God for what is empty. Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you are to work and do everything you have to do, but the seventh day is a rest to the Lord your God. On it nobody is to work — not you, not your son or your daughter, not the people who work for you, not even your ox or your donkey, and not the stranger staying with you. For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, and he rested on the seventh day; that is why he blessed the seventh day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother, so that it may go well with you, and you may live a long time in the good land the Lord your God is giving you. You are not to be unfaithful to your husband or your wife. You are not to steal. You are not to murder. You are not to tell lies about your neighbor. You are not to set your heart on what belongs to your neighbor — not his house, not his field, not his ox or his donkey, and not anything at all that is his.”

And all the people saw the flashes and the smoking mountain and heard the trumpet, and they were afraid, and they stood far back. And they said to Moses, “You speak to us — but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” And Moses said to them, “Do not be afraid. God has come to you to test you, so that the fear of him will be in you and you will not sin.” So the people stood a long way off — and Moses went up alone into the thick dark cloud where God was. And there God gave him many more words for the people. There were rules for judges, so that a poor man got the same fair hearing as a rich one. There were rules about oxen and fields and borrowed things, so that people who wronged each other had to put it right. There were rules to protect the ones with nobody to protect them — the widow, the orphan, the stranger — “for you know what it is like to be a stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” There were three feasts to keep every year, and a rest for the land itself every seventh year. And God wrote the ten words with his own hand on two flat stone tablets, and gave them to Moses to carry down.