The giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, one of the most earth-shattering experiences in the entire Bible, fused a rag-tag collection of fleeing former slaves into a people and spawned a moral system that undergirds Western civilization. So important is the Decalogue that it is recorded twice: once at the beginning of the Israelites’ journey in the desert and again just before their entry into Canaan. David Noel Freedman has now identified another role for these cardinal commandments: Woven through the books of the Hebrew Bible, from Exodus through Kings, is a heretofore undiscovered pattern of violations […]
