Circumstances of the Emergence of the Ten Commandments
The reception of the Ten Commandments from God is the most significant Old Testament event. The very formation of the Jewish people is connected with the Ten Commandments. Indeed, before receiving the commandments, a Semitic tribe of powerless and coarsened slaves lived in Egypt; after the Sinai legislation, a people arises, called to believe in and serve God, from which later came great prophets, apostles, and saints of the first centuries of Christianity. From it, according to the flesh, the Savior of the world Himself was born — the Lord Jesus Christ.
The circumstances of receiving the Ten Commandments are narrated in the Book of Exodus in chapters 19–20 and 24. One and a half thousand years before the Nativity of Christ, after the great miracles performed by the prophet Moses in Egypt, Pharaoh was forced to let the Jewish people go, and they, having miraculously crossed the Red Sea, went through the desert of the Sinai Peninsula to the south, heading toward the promised (Promised) land. By the fiftieth day after the exodus from Egypt, the Jewish people approached the foot of Mount Sinai and encamped there. (Sinai and Horeb are two peaks of the same mountain). Here the prophet Moses ascended the mountain, and the Lord declared to him: “Say… to the sons of Israel: …if you will obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My people” (Ex. 19:3,5). When Moses conveyed God's will to the Jews, they answered: “All that the Lord has said we will do and be obedient” (Ex. 19:8). Then the Lord commanded Moses to prepare the people for receiving the Law by the third day, and the Jews began to prepare for it with fasting and prayer. On the third day, a thick cloud covered the summit of Mount Sinai. Lightning flashed, thunder roared, and the loud sound of a trumpet resounded. Smoke ascended from the mountain, and the whole mountain shook violently. The people stood at a distance and watched what was happening with trembling. On the mountain, the Lord spoke His law to Moses in the form of the Ten Commandments, which the prophet then retold to the people.
Having accepted the commandments, the Jewish people promised to keep them, and then a Covenant (union) was concluded between God and the Jews, consisting in the fact that the Lord promised His mercies and protection to the Jewish people, and the Jews promised to live righteously. After that, Moses again ascended the mountain and remained there in fasting and prayer for forty days. Here the Lord gave Moses other ecclesiastical and civil laws, commanded to build the Tabernacle (a portable temple-tent), and gave rules regarding the service of priests and the performance of sacrifices. By the end of the forty days, God wrote His Ten Commandments, previously given orally, on two stone tablets (tablets) and commanded to keep them in the “Ark of the Covenant” (a gilded chest with images of cherubim on the top of the lid) for eternal remembrance of the Covenant concluded between Him and the people of Israel. (The location of the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments is unknown. In chapter 2 of the Second Book of Maccabees, it is narrated that during the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in the 6th century BCE, the prophet Jeremiah hid the stone tablets and some other temple belongings in a cave on Mount Nebo. This mountain is located twenty kilometers east of the place where the Jordan River flows into the Dead Sea. Before the Israelites entered the Promised Land (1400 years before Christ), the prophet Moses himself was buried on this same mountain. Repeated attempts to find the tablets with the Ten Commandments were unsuccessful). We present these commandments here:
1. I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods besides Me.
2. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
4. Remember the day of rest, to keep it holy; six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day — the day of rest — shall be dedicated to the Lord your God.
5. Honor your father and your mother, that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the land.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor desire your neighbor’s house, nor his field, nor his male servant, nor his female servant… nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.
During the further forty-year wandering in the desert, Moses gradually recorded much else that the Lord revealed to him on Mount Sinai and in subsequent appearances. From these records were formed the biblical books of Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy (Between the Ten Commandments given in the Book of Exodus 20:1–17 and in the Book of Deuteronomy 5:6–21 there is a slight difference in the brief explanations added to them. We omit these explanations here).