The Ten Commandments and the Book of the Covenant
The Ten Commandments, the first laws given to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, are the quintessential elements of Israel’s covenant with God.
The narrative context of the Ten Commandments, or the Decalogue, is the revelation at Mount Sinai. This experience is, for the Torah, the seminal moment in Israel’s relationship with God. There God offered the Israelites a special relationship whereby he would make them his “treasured [most personal] possession among all the peoples” and “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” close to him and sacrosanct (Exodus 19:3–6) if they would observe all the covenant terms that he would stipulate. Upon Israel’s promise to obey all God’s terms, he proclaimed the Ten Commandments. The establishment of this relationship was the ultimate purpose of the exodus: “I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians. . . . And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God” (Exodus 6:6–7).
The Ten Commandments, then, are the quintessential requisites that Israel must observe in order to enjoy and perpetuate that relationship. The commandments are arranged in two groups, duties to God and duties toward fellow humans. No punishments are stated; obedience is not motivated by fear of punishment but by God’s absolute authority and the people’s desire to live in accordance with his will.
The Ten Commandments are repeated in Deuteronomy 5:6–17 with a few variations, especially in the Sabbath commandment. The Ten Commandments seem to have been well known, to judge from apparent allusions to them by prophets and psalmists (see Jeremiah 7:3–11; Hosea 4:2; Psalms 50:7; 81:10–11).
The Book of the Covenant, like the Ten Commandments, is set at the revelation at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19–24). Because the people are terrified to hear God speak, Moses approaches God to receive the covenant stipulations on their behalf. The narrative is hard to follow because it incorporates various, sometimes inconsistent, accounts of the event. In its current form, however, the laws of 20:19–23:33 supplement the Ten Commandments and spell out the terms of the covenant in greater detail. After the people unanimously agree to the terms once again, Moses writes them down in “the Book of the Covenant” (translated as “the record of the covenant”) and conducts a dramatic ceremony that formally ratifies the covenant between God and the people. Here, too, then, the deeper significance of the laws is in their role as stating the way Israel may perpetuate its relationship with God.