1.
A nation is born amid a storm of plagues and blood after years of enslavement. It begins to peel away the layers of a servile consciousness from its spirit. The Passover sacrifice was a symbolic "patricide," in which the slaves slaughtered the source of Egyptian authority. As is well known, the chief Egyptian deity, Amun-Ra, was depicted as a man with a ram's head. Egypt's firstborn also died. "The blows of Amun are done. The pillar of dawn has risen," wrote Nathan Alterman.
The newborn people set out, almost expelled, from the house of bondage into the wilderness, where they face existential terror as the Egyptians pursue them. The Hebrews are called upon to enter the sea, with the waters rising to their very souls. Then the sea splits, and they cross through it. From the far shore, they watch their oppressors drown, and a mighty song of national deliverance bursts from their mouths. Another layer of slavery is shed.
2.
After the sea, when they encounter their first security challenge, they already muster courage and fight. Amalek arrives and strikes at the stragglers, the elderly, mothers and their children, abusing a people of the sword's survivors who had only just gained their freedom. This cruel tradition has been preserved by our enemies to this very day. Joshua, son of Nun, selects brave fighters, and they strike down Amalek by the sword.
Now they turn toward the mountain where God first revealed Himself to their leader and sent him to save them, promising: "And this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you: when you bring the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain" (Exodus 3:12). Moses' encounter with the bush that burned yet was not consumed was a symbolic illustration of the entire people's encounter with Mount Sinai, burning with fire yet not consumed. Just as Moses accepted his mission at the bush, the people at Mount Sinai accepted their historical mission to the world.
3.
The revelation at Mount Sinai is the first and most important covenant in a series forged between God and His people. This is not a mutual contract but the coercive "holding of the mountain over them like a barrel" by the One who redeemed His people and brought them into a covenant through the acceptance of the Torah. A covenant with God is akin to the laws of the universe: "If not for My covenant day and night, I would not have established the laws of heaven and earth," prophesied Jeremiah shortly before the destruction, apparently in 587 BCE, while imprisoned in the Court of the Guard (Jeremiah 33:25).
Even if the land is destroyed, the covenant will never be annulled, whatever the circumstances. This is not a revelation before a select few who then told the world the message they heard. No sect stands here, and no religion, but a national event of a people receiving its eternal constitution. Thus, God says as a preface to the revelation: "You shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples … and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:5–6). The terms are explicit: a people, a kingdom, a holy nation.
4.
Things that could not be said had they not been written: "The Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain" (Exodus 19:20). This is the rupture of the metaphysical into the physical, the eruption of eternity into history. "The Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up" (Exodus 19:20).
Even Moses did not ascend without an explicit command, after the mountain had first been bound and sanctified. And once he approaches the sacred, it is said that he ascended, but not to the summit itself, rather to the boundary between the human and the divine. Even in this singular event in history, there is no blurring of realms. God does not assume a form, and the human being does not become divine. "You heard the sound of words, but saw no form, only a voice," Moses recalled forty years later (Deuteronomy 4:12). Not by chance does the most famous sentence of our people begin with the words: "Hear, O Israel" (Deuteronomy 6:4).
The revelation at Mount Sinai transformed prophecy from an individual matter into a national story. Prophetic revelation is the innovation brought by the people of Israel: God speaks with human beings. Abraham Joshua Heschel described it as "the piercing of the thick, dense silence that fills the infinite distance between God and man." God takes interest in us, and His revelation is not the product of human mystical effort, but of God seeking out the human being. Heschel continues: "Not only does man need God, God 'needs' man as well. This is the knowledge that fortifies the soul of the people of Israel against despair."
5.
"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" (Exodus 20:2). First, "I." God is not an abstract philosophical idea, but addresses the human being directly: "I am the Lord your God," presenting Himself by His unique name, written but not pronounced. This is the One who stood behind the events in Egypt and at the sea.
In his philosophical work, Judah Halevi describes the king of the Khazars asking the Jewish sage about his faith. The sage drops a bombshell: "I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who brought the children of Israel out of Egypt with signs and wonders …" The answer astonishes the king, because the sages of other religions begin their faith with the God who created the world. Halevi follows the line of the first commandment. The God of Israel is thus the God who reveals Himself in history, leading His people to the promised land through the valley of the shadow of death among nations and beliefs, facing countless attempts to annihilate it.
One of the foundational assumptions of the Jewish tradition, Heschel wrote, is that the "source of truth" is not found only in an inner psychological process, but in "unique events that occurred at specific moments in history. There is no substitute for events of a prophetic nature." Therefore, Moses does not tell Pharaoh that the Creator sent him, but rather "the Lord, the God of Israel," the One revealed in the history of His people.
"Who brought you out … out of the house of bondage." Freedom is not merely negative, freedom from human enslavement alone, since one can leave only to live a life of lawlessness. The first commandment given in Egypt, "This month shall be for you the first of the months" (Exodus 12:2), dealt with the sanctification of the month, freedom from the shackles of time, and from the ordinary laws of history that govern other nations. One who sanctifies time is not subject to it but rules over it. "Slaves of time are slaves of slaves; the servant of the Lord alone is free," wrote Rabbi Judah Halevi in the 12th century, in the depths of exile, when we were subject to the mercy of others. He expressed our profound concept of freedom, mocking attempts to remove us from the stage of history. Freedom from the shackles of time led to the exodus from the house of bondage, freedom from human chains, and from there to universal freedom at Mount Sinai.
6.
The conclusion of the fifth commandment closes the circle with the first. Why did I bring you out of Egypt? "So that your days may be long upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you" (Exodus 20:12). Here, in the middle of the Ten Commandments, the promised land is mentioned as a kind of ultimate overarching goal. This is not a religion alone, but a national civilization bound to a specific land and aspiring to establish a kingdom within it.
"Four expressions of redemption were seared into our flesh at Sinai: 'I will bring out … I will deliver … I will redeem … I will take you to Me as a people, and I will be your God'" (Exodus 6:6–7). The fifth expression, "I will bring you into the land" (Exodus 6:8), remained suspended throughout our wanderings in the wilderness of nations.
Today, as we once again tread that promised land in an independent state, we understand that the Sinai covenant was never merely a dim memory, but a living engine that propelled us through the generations of hardship. The sovereign kingdom we established demonstrated how the laws of history bent before the laws of the covenant. The age of wonders still lies ahead. Patience.
