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About this book

Exodus

About this book

The Ten Commandments and the Covenant

Chapter 20

1 God spoke all these words: 2 “I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt,⁠ from the house of slavery.⁠ 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water below.⁠ 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me,⁠ 6 and showing covenant faithfulness to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.⁠ 7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold guiltless anyone who takes his name in vain. 8 “Remember the Sabbath day to set it apart as holy. 9 For six days you may labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your cattle, or the resident foreigner who is in your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.⁠ 12 “Honor your father and your mother,⁠ that you may live a long time in the land the Lord your God is giving to you.⁠ 13 “You shall not murder.⁠ 14 “You shall not commit adultery.⁠ 15 “You shall not steal.⁠ 16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.⁠ 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,⁠ nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.”⁠ 18 All the people were seeing the thundering and the lightning, and heard the sound of the horn, and saw the mountain smoking—and⁠ when the people saw it they trembled with fear and kept their distance.⁠ 19 They said to Moses, “You speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak with us, lest we die.” 20 Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you so that you do not sin.” 21 The people kept their distance, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was. 22 The Lord said to Moses, “Thus you will tell the Israelites: ‘You yourselves have seen that I have spoken with you from heaven.⁠ 23 You must not make gods of silver alongside me,⁠ nor make gods of gold for yourselves. 24 “‘You must make for me an altar made of earth, and you will sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your cattle. In every place where I cause my name to be honored I will come to you and I will bless you.⁠ 25 If you make me an altar of stone, you must not build it of stones shaped with tools, for if you use your tool on it you have defiled it.⁠ 26 And you must not go up by steps to my altar, so that your nakedness is not exposed.’⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Exodus 20:18 and 1 Enoch 89:31

Hebrew Bible · Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

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Summary

In retelling the Sinai theophany from Exodus, 1 Enoch repeats the imagery of thunder, lightning, and fear but omits the giving of the Torah, possibly reflecting its greater emphasis on apocalyptic and eschatological themes.

Passages

Exodus 20:18

Hebrew Bible
16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.” 18 All the people were seeing the thundering and the lightning, and heard the sound of the horn, and saw the mountain smoking—and when the people saw it they trembled with fear and kept their distance. 19 They said to Moses, “You speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak with us, lest we die.” 20 Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you so that you do not sin.”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Exodus

1 Enoch 89:31

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
29 That sheep went up to the summit of that lofty rock, and the Lord of the sheep sent it to them. 30 After that I saw the Lord of the sheep, who stood before them, and His appearance was great and terrible and majestic, and all those sheep saw Him and were afraid before His face. 31 They all feared and trembled because of Him, and they cried out to that sheep with them: 'We are not able to stand before our Lord or to look on Him.' 32 That sheep which led them went up again to the summit of that rock, but the sheep began to be blinded and to wander from the way which he had shown them, and that sheep did not know of it. 33 The Lord of the sheep was very angry with them, and that sheep learned of it, and went down from the summit of the rock, and came to the sheep, and found the majority of them blinded and gone astray.
300 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Enoch

References

"... It is certainly the case that there is little direct mention made of the Mosaic Torah [in 1 Enoch]; only 93:6 and possibly 99:2 make any explicit reference to that covenant. The Animal Apocalypse devotes a significant portion of its narrative to the Sinai theophany (89:29–35), but makes no explicit mention of the giving of the Torah, a significant silence in the eyes of Nickelsburg ..."
Grant Macaskill, Revealed Wisdom and Inaugurated Eschatology in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 46.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Exodus 20:18 and 1 Enoch 89:31

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