1. On the third new moon . . . did they come. Umberto Cassuto aptly observes that instead of the usual “and it happened” (wayehi) that marks the beginning of narrative units, this portentous moment—the pivotal one in the whole Torah—begins abruptly (using the perfective instead of the expected imperfective verb form), “as though to notify us that here begins a theme that stands alone, that is unique.”

new moon. This is the common biblical meaning of ḥodesh, though it can also mean “month,” its usual meaning in later Hebrew. The fact that the phrase in apposition, “on this day,” refers to one particular day makes the sense of “new moon” inevitable, and this is also the consensus of medieval Hebrew commentators.

2. And they journeyed onward from Rephidim. After the stark statement of the crucial narrative datum in the preceding verse that the Israelites had arrived in the Wilderness of Sinai, we get a report that picks up the itinerary of wanderings, tracing the trajectory from the previous stage, Rephidim, to Sinai, and now specifying that the place of encampment is not just the Wilderness of Sinai but over against the mountain.

3. And Moses had gone up to God. The Hebrew, like this translation, has an indication of pluperfect tense, suggesting that even as the people were pitching their tents opposite the mountain, Moses, who after his epiphany at the burning bush knew this place as “the mountain of God,” had made his way to the heights to speak with God.

Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob, and shall you tell to the Israelites. The perfect poetic parallelism, both semantic and rhythmic, of this sentence signals the lofty, strongly cadenced language, akin to epic in its grandeur, of the entire episode.

4. I bore you on the wings of eagles. Although no one has succeeded in squaring this grand image with ornithological behavior, the soaring eagle’s supremacy among birds is meant to suggest the majestic divine power that miraculously swept up the Hebrews and bore them off from the house of bondage. The metaphorical implication is that the Hebrews themselves are helpless fledglings, unable to fly on their own. (Compare Deuteronomy 32:11.)

5. you will become for Me a treasure among all the peoples, for Mine is all the earth. “Treasure” (segulah), as Yitzhak Avishur has pointed out, is paired in a Ugaritic document with “vassal” (Hebrew, ʿeved), and seems to be a term borrowed from the realm of precious objects for contexts of covenants: the faithful vassal becomes the cherished treasure of his sovereign. Because the LORD is, as He declares here, sovereign of all the earth, it is His prerogative to privilege one people among the many as His special treasure.

6. a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The implementation of the divine promise that Israel will become God’s treasure is conditional on Israel’s upholding the terms of the Covenant. In the covenantal passages in Genesis, it was stipulated that Abraham’s seed must do justice and righteousness. The aspiration here is wound to a still higher pitch, envisaging an Israel that will earn its special status before the deity by becoming a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Should this be construed as divine hyperbole? In any case, the chasm between that ideal and the actual behavior of the people will continue to preoccupy the biblical writers, through to the Prophets.

7. he set before them all these words. Words (devarim) are imagined in biblical Hebrew to be virtually palpable entities, which can be put before people, which have powerful consequences from the moment they are spoken. It may well be, as Cassuto proposes, that the highlighting of devarim in this episode is a kind of prelude to the giving of the Ten Words that immediately follows.

8. Moses brought back the people’s words to the LORD. Presumably, God would have had no trouble hearing what the people said without Moses’s help. This formulation, however, stresses Moses’s crucial role as intermediary in this episode: God is up on the mountain, the people are down below, and Moses shuttles up and down between the two. Herein lies a principal justification for the recurrence of “go up” and “come down” as thematic key words, a feature of the chapter noted by Everett Fox.

9. in the utmost cloud. The Hebrew ʿav he_ʿanan brackets together two words that mean the same thing and that elsewhere are paired in poetic parallelism. The effect would seem to be a kind of epic intensification. (Compare 10:22, “pitch-dark,” which similarly puts together two synonyms, ḥoshekh ʾafelah.) It should be noted that ʿav means “cloud” and is not the same as ʿaveh, “thick,” as most translations have assumed.

10. their cloaks. The Hebrew semalot means “cloaks” or some sort of outer wrap, and is not the general word for garments, begadim, though it may well be a synecdoche for garments here. The choice of this term is probably dictated by the fact that it is semalot that the Hebrews borrow from their Egyptian neighbors as they flee. It thus makes particular sense that they are enjoined now as part of the process of consecration to launder these cloaks they took off the backs of Egyptian idolators.

13. No hand shall touch him. Some construe the Hebrew masculine pronoun bo as “it,” referring to Mount Sinai, because the previous verse has pronounced a ban on touching even the edge of the mountain. The clear syntactical connection of this clause, however, as Abraham ibn Ezra sees, is with the two clauses that follow: the transgressor is to be killed from a distance, by stoning or arrows—perhaps because by violating this taboo he has set himself irrevocably apart from the community.

they it is who will go up the mountain. The pronoun hemah, “they,” is placed in an emphatic position. The most plausible referent is Moses and Aaron, in contradistinction to the rest of the people.

16. there was thunder and lightning and a heavy cloud on the mountain and the sound of the ram’s horn. It trivializes the grand solemnity and the epic sweep of this narrative moment to “explain” it through the purported origins of YHWH as a desert-storm god. In the Syro-Palestinian tradition of mythological poetry upon which the Hebrew writer drew for his imagery, thunder and lightning were the martial accoutrements of the sky god, as they are often in biblical poetry. Literature being an essentially conservative and self-recapitulative medium, a continuity of poetic tropes does not necessarily mean a continuity of theology—the pagan epic apparatus of Milton’s Paradise Lost is a central case in point. The Sinai encounter is imagined as the decisive moment in human history when the celestial and terrestrial realms are brought into panoramic engagement, and as God comes down on the mountain, every sort of natural fireworks is let loose, so that trembling seizes not only the people but the mountain itself. The word for “thunder,” qolot, is not the usual raʿam but the word that generally means “voices” or “sounds,” and so it is orchestrated with “the sound of the ram’s horn” (qol hashofar) that reverberates so strongly against the ground-base of the thunder. (The word for “ram’s horn” here is different from yovel, the term used in verse 13, but there does not seem to be any important difference in meaning.) It is something of a mystery as to where this ram’s horn comes from and who is blowing it. Since ram’s horns were used both in calls to arms and in coronation ceremonies, one may assume this blast is of celestial origin, probably blown by a member of God’s angelic entourage, to announce the awe-inspiring descent of the King of all the earth to deliver the Ten Words to His people.

19. with voice. The same multivalent Hebrew word qol has encouraged some interpreters to render this as “in thunder.” That translation may sound more impressive, but it is unlikely for two reasons. Qol in the singular, as against qolot in the plural, means “voice” or “sound,” not “thunder.” And the heart of the whole story of the Sinai epiphany is that God addresses Moses with words (devarim), not with son et lumière, which are merely the atmospheric prelude to divine speech. The sense, then, of “Moses would speak, and God would answer him with voice” is that Moses and God actually exchange speech on the mountain, as a man would speak with his fellow man. This speech evidently is endowed with miraculous audibility, since it takes place against the most intense background noise of thunder and the constantly mounting blast of the ram’s horn.

21. Go down, warn the people, lest they break through. God is repeating instructions that have already been carried out, a fact registered by Moses in his response (verse 23: “You Yourself warned us . . .”). The point of the repetition is to underscore the absolute inviolability of the boundary between the mountain where the deity is so awesomely manifested and the people, and to dramatize Moses’s necessary role as intermediary going down to the people and up to the mountaintop.

perish. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “fall.” The deity is imagined as setting up a sort of terrific force field that, when violated, “bursts forth”—the same verb is used elsewhere as a response to violation of sancta—to destroy the trespasser.

22. And the priests. This reference is a little puzzling because as yet there has been no report of the establishment of a priestly caste. Perhaps the priesthood was so fundamental to the constitution of the people for the later writer that he assumed it must always have existed. Perhaps Moses already designated priests from the tribe of Levi, for sacrifices were offered after the victory over Amalek. Ibn Ezra solves the problem by identifying “priests” here with the firstborn—a proposal that may have some historical merit, presupposing an archaic period in which priestly functions were performed by the firstborn.

who come near to the LORD. Even though their priestly role allows them to approach the LORD by offering sacrifices to Him, in this overwhelming manifestation of God’s presence, they are to consecrate themselves like the rest of the people and remain within the boundary Moses has marked at the bottom of the mountain.

25. And Moses went down to the people and said it to them. The object of “said” (“it”) is supplied by the translation, which follows the decisive consensus of traditional Hebrew commentators that assumes the content of the saying is the warning about not crossing the boundary which God has just asked Moses to convey to the people. Normally, the verb “to say” would be followed by quoted speech, whereas the verb “to speak” (diber) does not typically require quoted speech after it. Perhaps “to say” is used here for Moses in order to avoid any overlap with God’s speech-act in the very next verse: “And God spoke (wayedaber) these words (devarim).” It should be kept in mind that the chapter breaks are medieval, so the original text moved directly from Moses’s saying to God’s speaking.