It was by the discipline of a crushing bondage, no less spiritually than physically debasing (Exod. xvi. 3 ; Num. xi. 4, 5 ; Josh. xxiv. 19 ; Ezek. xx. 5-9 ; xxiii. 3, 19. See Kalisch On the Feast of the Passover [Comment. on Exodus, p. 180] ), that the chosen people were prepared for political freedom and spiritual emancipation in a theocratic unity and brotherhood. But God had provided, in his gracious providence, especial means of bringing about this result in the institution of circumcision, the passover, and the Sabbath. When they went down to the house of bondage, the land of Egypt (Exod. xx. 2), they bore with them only the initial sign of a covenanted people, in that circum cision which bound the individual alone to Jehovah (Kalisch on Exod. xx. 8) ; when they at last quitted it, they celebrated their exodus by the festi val of the passover, the sign of a national devotion to the God who had delivered them (Exod. xii. 6); and what the right of circumcision did for them once in a lifetime, and the passover once in a year, the primeval institute of the Sabbath, which had never been dropped wholly among them, accom plished with even a weekly frequency. This pro bation does not fail of its purpose. Israel gets its adoption and call from its state of slavery to be the Lord's `first-born' (Exod. iv. 22), chosen before all other nations—to do for them what a first-born son was privileged to do for a family—to exercise priestly functions, to preserve and propagate the doctrine of God, and thus to become the teachers and prophets of the nations. Fresh from the signs and wonders of their exodus, which they had consecrated by the sacramental passover, the youthful nation is brought to the base of Mount Sinai, one of the heights of Horeb, the scene of God's first revelation to Moses, there to be in augurated in its theocratic polity for its holy func tions. It is to be observed, that as usual with God in his dealings with men, the first overtures of a covenant come from the Divine being. After his own precedents of mercy in the cases of Noah* (Gen. vi. t8 ; ix. 9-17), and of Abraham (xvii. 2-8), repeated with Isaac (xxvi. 2-5), and with Jacob (xxxv. 9-12), God now expressly invites, through Moses, the liberated nation to enter with him into a gracious covenant (Exod. xix. 3-6). The people promptly accept the offer and its con ditions (xix. 8). A solemn preparation during three days is made (xix. to- r5) for the interview, which Jehovah proposed to hold in clouded majesty (xix. 9). Subdued, however, as his glory was, it was too much for the terrestrial objects before which it was displayed. Old Sinai quaked greatly' (xix. 18) ; all the people in the camp trembled' (xix. 16) ; and even Moses, used as he was to the presence of God, partook of the awful feeling (Heb. xii. 21). Amidst these sublime portents of thunders and lightnings, and trembling hearts, and surrounded with a heavenly retinue (Dent. xxxiii. 2), Jehovah spake in audible words to the sanctified' host, which were ranged at a specified distance around the foot of the mountain, and whose attention had been fixed by a loud trumpet sound. Ten words,' or utterances, are expressly mentioned as spoken by Jehovah (-110,.
annm, Exod. xxxiv. 28 ; Dent. iv. 13 ; x. 4). In these lies the DECALOGUE, the essence of the theo cratic legislation, the root of all the other laws. It attested the will of God to the people, and hence is called the Testimony' (nnyn, see Exod. xxxi.
18 ; xxxii. 15 ; xxxiv. 29) ; and was the earliest document of the Covenant, and, as such, was sometimes emphatically named the Covenant' Exod. xxxiv. 28 ; Dent. iv. 13 ; and so, later, r Kings viii. 21 ; 2 Chron. vi. r1). These ten words' (the common synonym of ten com mandments does not occur in the original Scrip tures) were the only portion of the law which Jehovah announced himself. More, perhaps, he might have spoken, but the affrighted people en treated that Moses might be their mediator : 'Speak thou with us, and we will hear ; but let not God speak with us, lest we die' (Exod. xx. 19). Enough
had been done to reveal the real existence of Jehovah, and to vindicate the greatness of his majesty. So he condescended to the weakness of his people, and ceased from his personal commu nications to them. But he added a caution against idolatry (xx. 22, 23), the vanity of which he bade them conclude from his own actual voice which they had heard (comp. verse 22 with Ps. cxv. 3-9 ; Is. xliv. 18-2o). Moreover, as the nation in general had renounced its priestly access to Jeho vah, an official priesthood became necessary ; God accordingly at once indicated to Moses the institution of an altar, and gave to him, who (as mediator) combined in himself at the moment all functions, including the sacerdotal itself (whence it was he who afterwards consecrated Aaron and his sons, see Exod. xl. 12-16), directions respecting it (xx. 24-26). The twentieth chap. of Exodus, which contains the Divine proclamation of the Decalogue as the nucleus of the theocratic law, is followed by legislative prescriptions, throughout chapters xxi.-xxiii. 19, which comprise what is called in chap. xxiv. 7, ri4141 'the book of the covenant' (Havernick, Introduction, gives a much wider sense to this Book of the C. ;' but Hengstenberg, On the Pent. [Clark], ii. 125 ; Kurtz, Old Cov. [Clark], iii. r41 ; Bertheau, Die sicken Gruppen ; Knobel, on Exodus ; Rosenmiiller, in lac., follow the prevalent opinion of the older commentators, which we adopt, influenced by the simple sense of the entire passage ; see Corn. a Lapide and Patrick on Exod. xxiv. 7and, more fully, Dresdius, De libro qui fiber foderis appella• tur). This Book of the Covenant' contained pro bably the ten commandments, or words of Jehovah, (as the basis) and the judgments,' or statutary de tails of the same, found in chapters xxi.-xxiii., which God gave the people by Moses, as the terms on which they stood in the theocratic covenant with him (see this division of the Book,' apparently in dicated in Exod. xxiv. 3, where nin"-olim= the Decalogue, and 10'LIDZ.i1V1 = the subse quent statutes, or Decalogue 'reduced to a practical code).
The Structural Character of the Law.—In the r3th section of Dr. Forbes' work, On the Sym metrical Structure of Scripture, the Decalogue is submitted to a symmetrical analysis, and the significance of the number ten as the symbol of completeness is illustrated after S:ymbolik des Mos. Czeltus ; and Dr. Fairbairn's Typology of Scripture. This, however, we can do no more than thus cursorily refer the reader to (see also Kurtz, Old Covenant, ill. 121, and the autho rities he quotes). It is more to our purpose to accept the number ten as the basis indicated by the Divine author himself (see the above-men tioned lynnri rnvi, of Exod. xxxiv. 28) of the structural form of his law. Ernst Bertheau, Die Sieben Gruppen Mos. Gesetze, has taken this basis ; and, whatever may be thought of his work as a whole (Ewald speaks very favourably of it, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, ii. 217, and accepts it as the groundwork of a still more elaborate structural division of some of the laws ; Baum garten, Comment. zum Pentateuch, follows it largely in his vol. ii. ; while Kurtz, Old Covenant [Clark], iii. 138, commends the hypothesis as having ' much to recommend it,' and as displaying great acuteness on the author's part, but relinquishes it, too summarily we think, as untenable), there is no doubt much to interest the reader in it, and especially in this early portion of the Mosaic the Book of the Covenant.' This he suc ceeds in showing to consist of a group of deca logues, which we must here be content with simply indicating. The 'group' contains seven sections, and each of these ten commandments. The first section is the Decalogue, ear' eEoxhP, God's own spoken words.' This and the six other sections are contained in the following passages : Section I. Exod. xx. 3, 4, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17..