Before the Israelites actually reached the sacred mountain, they had to make more than one encampment in ‘the Wilderness of Sin.’ The itinerary in the book of Numbers gives the names of three—Dophkah, Alush, and Rephidim—the narrative mentions only the last. Rephidim, the ‘Encampments,’ was the scene of the first conflict the Israelites were called upon to face. Here they were attacked by the Amalekites, the Bedâwin tribes who still consider the desert as their own, and whose hand is against all that pass through it. The attack was repulsed, but not without loss, and the remembrance of it never faded from the minds of the Hebrew people. There was henceforth to be war between Amalek and Israel ‘from generation to generation,’ until the Bedâwin marauders of the desert should be destroyed. The Song of Deborah (Judg. v. 14) tells us how the struggle was continued after the settlement in Canaan, and the first Israelitish king did his utmost to root out these pests of the Hebrew borderland. Saul smote them, it is said, from Havilah to Shur (1 Sam. xv. 7), from the ‘sandy’ desert of Arabia Petræa to the great Wall of Egypt. And the Hebrew writer expressly adds that these were the same Amalekites as those who had lain in wait for Israel ‘in the way when he came up from Egypt.’ There were no Amalekites in the Sinaitic peninsula; the desert in which they ranged was that which adjoined Edom, and was known to the ancient Babylonians as the ‘land of Melukhkha.’ Hence it was that Edomites and Amalekites were mingled together, and that Amalek was counted by the genealogists a grandson of Esau.

The battle at Rephidim was followed by the visit of the father-in-law of Moses, Jethro, ‘the priest of Midian.’ The visit was natural, for the real Sinai lay on the frontier of Midian. It was while Moses was feeding the flock of Jethro that he had first come to it and received his commission from Yahveh. Here, therefore, at ‘the Mount of God,’ he was within hail of his old home.

Jethro’s visit marked the first step in the organisation of Israel. Under his guidance and counsel judges of various grades were appointed before whom minor cases could be brought, and each of whom was invested with a certain amount of power. The functions of the ‘judge’ were administrative and executive as well as legal; what was meant by the term we may learn from the book of Judges as well as from the Shophetim or judges who at one time took the place of the kings at Tyre. They corresponded closely with the higher officials in the Turkish provinces, who possess an undefined and in some respects absolute authority, subject only to the official who is immediately above them. The ‘judges’ established by Moses on Jethro’s advice derived their titles from the numerical extent of their jurisdiction. They were judges ‘of thousands,’ ‘of hundreds,’ ‘of fifties,’ and ‘of tens.’ The community was divided into ideal units, of larger and smaller size, the basis of the arrangement being the decimal system. The whole arrangement may have been of Midianite origin; at all events, in the Assyrian texts we hear also of a ‘captain of fifty’ and a ‘captain of ten.’[[196]]

Moses remained the supreme ‘judge’ and lawgiver of his people. To him alone all ‘great matters’ were referred, and from him came all the laws and ordinances, the rules and regulations which they were called upon to obey. The leader who had brought them safely out of ‘the house of bondage’ now became their recognised head and legislator. Moses ‘was king in Jeshurun,’ exercising all the authority in Israel which in later times belonged to the king.

Hardly was the political organisation of the new community completed before the Israelitish tribes reached the venerated sanctuary of Sinai, and encamped before ‘the Mount of God.’ The first object of their journey was accomplished, and the promise of Yahveh was fulfilled that they should ‘serve God’ on the mountain where He had appeared to their leader. Here at Sinai the earlier portion of the Mosaic legislation was promulgated. It was subsequently supplemented by the legislation at Kadesh-Barnea, that second resting-place of the tribes, where by the side of En-Mishpat, ‘the Spring of Judgment,’ they prepared themselves in the security of the heart of the desert for the future invasion of Canaan.

It was amid the terrors of a thunderstorm that Yahveh declared His laws to the people of Israel. While darkness rested on the summit of the mountain, broken only by the flashes of the lightning and the voice of the thunder, ‘the Ten Words’ were delivered to man. In their forefront stood that stern, uncompromising declaration of monotheism which henceforth marked the religion of Israel. They began with the commandment that Israel should have ‘no other gods before’ the Lord. Yahveh had brought them forth from Egypt, and Yahveh only must they therefore serve. The commands which followed were partly general, partly applicable to the Israelites alone. The prohibition to make ‘the likeness of any thing in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth,’ defined the character of the God before whom no other was to be worshipped. He had no form or attributes which could be represented by art; it was the gods of the Gentiles only of whom images or pictures could be made. Egypt had been a land of idols, and in leaving Egypt Yahveh required that the idols also should be left behind. In the simple life of the desert there was no place for art: here man was alone with his Creator, who revealed Himself in the light of the burning bush or the thunderings of the storm, not under the forms of the creatures He had made. The second commandment was part of the teaching which the wanderings in the desert were intended to enforce; and if Israel was to remain a ‘peculiar people,’ dedicated to the service of Yahveh, and secure from absorption into the nations that surrounded it, it was necessary that it should be fenced about with a law of puritanical strictness, which forbade the introduction of art under any shape. Art in the world of the Exodus was too closely interwoven with the religions of Egypt and Canaan and Babylonia to be other than a forbidden thing. The subsequent history of Israel proved how wise and needful had been the prohibition. The art which adorned the temple and palace of Solomon was followed by the erection of altars to the divinities of the heathen, and even in the wilderness the golden calf was worshipped in sight of Sinai itself.

The third and fourth commandments were, like the second, Israelitish rather than general in character. The third forbade taking in vain the name of Yahveh; the name of the national God of Israel which had been so specially revealed was too sacred to be lightly spoken of. The ‘name’ of Yahveh, in fact, was equivalent to Yahveh Himself, and to deal lightly with the name was to deal lightly with One of whose essence it was. The obligation to keep the Sabbath was part of the culture which Western Asia had received from Babylonia. Among the Babylonians the Sabbath had been observed from early times, and the institution seems to have gone back to a pre-Semitic period. At all events, it was denoted in Sumerian by a term which a cuneiform tablet explains as ‘a day of rest for the heart,’ and its Assyrian name of Sabattu or ‘Sabbath’ was even derived by the native etymologists from the two Sumerian words sa, ‘a heart,’ and bat, ‘to rest.’[[197]] In Babylonia and Assyria, as in Israel, the Sabbath was observed every seventh day, perhaps in accordance with the astronomical system which dedicated the seven days of the week to the seven planets of Babylonian science. These seven-day weeks, however, were based on the lunar months of the Babylonian year, the Sabbath or rest-day being on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th of each month. There was, moreover, another Sabbath on the 19th of the month, that being the end of the seventh week from the first day of the preceding month. On these Sabbath days work of all kinds was forbidden to be performed. The king, it was laid down, ‘must not eat flesh that has been cooked over the coals or in the smoke, must not change the garments of his body, must not wear white clothing, must not offer sacrifices, must not ride in a chariot, must not issue royal decrees.’ Even the diviner was not allowed to ‘mutter incantations in a secret place.’ Nor was it permitted to take medicine.

With the other elements of Babylonian culture the institution of the Sabbath had made its way to the West. But at Sinai it was given a new and special application. Not only was it to be observed each seventh day of the week, irrespective of the beginning of the month, it became also a sign and mark of the covenant between Israel and its national God. In the book of Exodus, it is true, the reason given for keeping it is that Yahveh had rested on the seventh day from His work of creation—a reason which will hardly be accepted by the geologist—but in Deuteronomy (v. 15) it is more fittingly brought into direct connection with the deliverance from Egypt: ‘Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.’

The sanction of the fifth commandment is also one which applied to Israel alone: children were enjoined to honour their parents that their days might be long in the land which Yahveh had promised to give them. But the last five commandments are of general application, and accordingly no reason is given for keeping them derived from the accidents of Hebrew history. They apply to all mankind, at all times and in all parts of the world. Murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and covetousness are all crimes forbidden everywhere by the legal or moral code. But it is strange that lying and deceit are not included among them; in this respect the so-called negative confession, which the soul of the dead Egyptian was called upon to make in the next world, was more complete.[[198]] The lie, however, which does not involve false witness is apt to be condoned among the nations of the East.

The ten commandments were followed by a series of other laws, many of which were probably re-enactments of laws or regulations already in force. The law of retaliation, for instance (Exod. xxi. 23-25), is as old as human society; so also is the law that murder should be punished by death (xxi. 12). The law which punished the master for the murder of a slave if he died on the spot, but allowed him to go scot-free if the slave lingered for a day or two (xxi. 20, 21), had its parallel in ancient Babylonia, and the death-penalty exacted from the ox which had gored a man (xxi. 28-32) is a survival from the days when dumb animals and even inanimate objects were regarded as responsible for the injuries they had caused.[[199]] The regulations in regard to ‘a field or vineyard,’ or ‘the standing corn’ of a field (xxii. 5, 6), belonged to the land of Goshen or to Canaan, not to the life in the wilderness, and the dedication of the firstborn to God (xxii. 29, 30) was one of the most ancient articles of Semitic faith.