“And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.
“And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice.
“And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mount; and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up.” And the first thing that Moses did on behalf of the Lord was to “charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish.”
And Moses replied to God’s enquiry, “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai: for thou chargedst us, saying, Set bounds about the mount.
“And the Lord said unto him, Away, get thee down, and thou shalt come up, thou, and Aaron with thee: but let not the priests and the people break through to come up unto the Lord, lest he break forth upon them.
“So Moses went down unto the people, and spake unto them.”
Whether the decalogue, as we know it, was a code of law actually delivered upon Sinai, which German critics very much dispute as being inconsistent with the stage of civilization at which the Israelites had arrived, but which is altogether kindred to the Babylonish law with which Moses was familiar, is immaterial for the present purpose. What is essential is that beside the decalogue itself there is a considerable body of law chiefly concerned with the position of servants or slaves, the difference between assaults or torts committed with or without malice, theft, trespass, and the regulation of the lex talionis. There are beside a variety of other matters touched upon all of which may be found in the 21st, 22d, and 23d chapters of Exodus.
Up to this point in his show Moses had behaved with discretion and had obtained a complete success. The next day he went on to demand an acceptance of his code, which he prepared to submit in form. But as a preliminary he made ready to take Aaron and his two sons, together with seventy elders of the congregation up the mountain, to be especially impressed with a sacrifice and a feast which he had it in his mind to organize. In the first place, “Moses ... rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar, ... and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord....
“And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient.”
Had Moses been content to end his ceremony here and to return to the camp with his book of the covenant duly accepted as law, all might have been well. But success seems to have intoxicated him, and he conceived an undue contempt for the intelligence of his audience, being, apparently, convinced that there were no limits to their credulity, and that he could do with them as he pleased.