MishpatimShemot (exodus)

The Jewish Legal System
While Moses was still on Mount Sinai, God gave him the general outline of all the Torah’s commandments. In this context, He repeated the legal code that He gave the people at Marah and that Moses reviewed with them before the Giving of the Torah. God then taught Moses the following laws in detail: “These are some of the laws that you must set before the Israelites when you descend the mountain:

If any of you buy a Hebrew bondman from the court, he must serve his master for six years, and in the seventh year he must go free without further obligation to make any payment. He will also go free in the Jubilee year, even if this occurs prior to the end of the six years from when he was purchased.

If the bondman has a Jewish wife and his master gives him a non-Jewish bondwoman for a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the non-Jewish wife and her children will belong to her master, and when he leaves his master’s service, he must leave alone, i.e., without them, and return to his Jewish wife and family.

But if, in such a case, the bondman says at least twice, ‘I am fond of my master, my non-Jewish wife, and my non-Jewish children; I do not want to go free,’

then his master must bring him to the court that sold him and they must take him to the door. The door must be standing upright, like the doorpost. His master must then pierce his right earlobe straight into the door with an awl, and the bondman must serve him until the next Jubilee year, when he will go free whether he wants to or not.

The Hebrew Bondwoman
If a man is too poor to marry off his daughter, he may sell her for a period of service to a wealthier family with the intention that she eventually marry a member of this family: ideally, the father, or if that is not appropriate, the son. In such a case, the money paid to the girl’s father will retroactively become her betrothal money. If a man sells his daughter in this way as a bondwoman, he can only do so if she is still a minor, that is, if she is less than 12 years old and has not yet shown signs of incipient puberty. She must serve the master either for six years, or until the Jubilee year, or until she shows signs of incipient puberty – whichever comes first. She may not leave his service as non-Jewish bondservants sometimes do, i.e., in consequence of the master inflicting a blow that causes the loss of a tooth or an eye. If her master causes her such damage, he must pay her full restitution according to law, but she does not go free because of it.

If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master, who should have designated her as a wife for himself, and prior to the end of her term of service the opportunity arises for her to be redeemed from the term monetarily, the master must assist in her redemption by allowing her to be redeemed for less money than he paid for her, proportionate to the fraction of the six-year period she actually served. He is not authorized to sell her to another master, for he betrayed her by not marrying her. Similarly, her father is not authorized to sell her to another master, for he already betrayed her once by selling her to someone who did not eventually marry her, and he may not subject her to such an ordeal again.

If, on the other hand, the master designates her as a wife for his son, the son may also consider the money paid to the girl’s father as her betrothal money. The son, as her husband, must accord her the standard rights of girls who marry: food, clothing, and conjugal rights.

If he marries an additional wife, he may not reduce the first one’s food, clothing, or conjugal rights.

If the master takes none of these three earlier-listed courses of action for her – i.e., marrying her himself, marrying her off to his son, or letting her be redeemed – she must go out free at the end of her term, without owing him any additional payment.

Murder and Manslaughter
An adult who strikes a man, woman, or child (but not a living but non-viable premature baby) so that the latter dies must be put to death.

If, however, he did not lie in wait or intend to kill, but God caused it to happen to him, then I will provide you a place to which he can flee.

The law that a murderer must be put to death applies only if such a person acts intentionally against his fellow Jew to kill him with guile. But if someone is liable to the death penalty, you must administer it; even if he is a priest and is about to perform some priestly function, you must take him from My very Altar to die.

Honor to Parents
Someone who strikes his father or mother and thereby inflicts a wound on them must be put to death by strangulation. This rule applies only while the parent is alive; striking one’s parent’s corpse is not a capital offense. A person who inflicts a wound on anyone else, however, is only liable for damages.

Dishonoring Parents
An adult who curses his father or mother must be put to death by stoning, even if he curses them after their death.

Compensation for Injuries
Whenever one person injures another, there are five types of damage for which the assailant can be held responsible to compensate the victim: depreciation, pain, incapacitation, medical fees, and embarrassment. With regard to incapacitation and medical fees, when two men are quarreling and one man strikes the other with a stone or with his fist and he does not die but becomes unable to work,

if he then gets up and walks about outside by himself, as he did before, the one who struck him must be acquitted. In the meantime, however, you must arrest the assailant and wait to see if his victim recovers. Still, he must pay for his loss of work and provide for his complete recovery. He must pay him for the time he was away from work as if he was merely working as a guard, and pay his medical bills. Laws regarding compensation for other types of damage will be discussed further on.

The Non-Jewish Bondservant
You are permitted to purchase certain non-Jews as bondservants, and the children of non-Jewish bondwomen in your possession also become your bondservants. If a man strikes his non-Jewish bondman or bondwoman in a place on the body susceptible to a lethal blow, and does so with a rod capable of inflicting a lethal blow, and he or she in fact dies under his hand, he or she must be avenged by putting the master to death by the sword.

Thus, the master incurs the death penalty for killing his non-Jewish bondservant just as he would for killing anyone else. However, there is an exception: if the bondservant survives for at least one full day – i.e., for 24 hours from the time the blow is delivered – before dying, he must not be avenged, since he is his master’s property. If anyone other than the master strikes the bondservant, however, this leniency does not apply.

Compensation for Injuries, continued
If men are fighting with each other and they accidentally collide with a pregnant woman, causing her to miscarry though not causing her a fatal injury, then the guilty party must be fined when the woman’s husband sues him, and he must pay at the court’s discretion. The court determines how much this woman would have been sold for on the slave market when she was pregnant and how much she would be sold for now that she is not pregnant, and the guilty party must pay the difference to the woman’s husband.

If, however, she suffers a fatal injury, you must exact the monetary compensation of a life for a life. The guilty party must pay the woman’s heirs the price she would have commanded on the slave market when alive. According to another opinion, the party guilty of manslaughter must be put to death.

Monetary compensation for an eye must be made for the loss of sight in an eye, of a tooth for a tooth, of a hand for a hand, and of a leg for a leg. In all these cases, the assailant must pay the victim the difference between the price he would command on the slave market before and after incurring the injury.

Likewise, monetary compensation for the pain suffered for a burn must be made for a burn, that for a bleeding wound for a wound, and that for a bloodless bruise for a bruise, even though there may be no difference in the price the victim would command on the slave market before and after having incurred such injuries.

The Non-Jewish Bondservant, continued
The law of release after six years, at the Jubilee year, or (for females) upon the onset of puberty, does not apply to non-Jewish bondservants. They serve for life or for the term for which they were bought, unless someone pays for their release or their master frees them. When their master frees them, they become full Israelites. If, however, a person strikes the eye of his non-Jewish bondman or the eye of his non-Jewish bondwoman and ruins his eyesight, he must free him or her as compensation for the loss of his or her eye. The same applies if the master strikes and destroys any of the bondservant’s fingers, toes, ears, nose, or (in the case of the bondman) his reproductive organ.

Similarly, if he knocks out the permanent tooth of his bondman or the permanent tooth of his bondwoman, he must free him or her as compensation for the loss of his or her tooth. This law does not apply to child-bondservants’ primary teeth.

The Goring Animal
If any animal – for example, an ox – gores a man or woman and the victim dies, the ox must be stoned; its meat may not be eaten – even were the animal to be ritually slaughtered instead of stoned. And no other material benefit may be derived from it, either. But the owner of the ox must be acquitted, as long as it is either the first, second, or third time this ox had gored someone.

However, if it was an ox that had gored on three previous occasions, and its owner had been warned in court by those who had witnessed it gore that it had thus proven itself to be a malicious ox and that he must therefore guard it, but he nonetheless did not guard it, and it then killed a man or a woman by goring or any other means, the ox must be stoned. Its owner, too, will be put to death – but by the heavenly court, not by the earthly court.

Nonetheless, the earthly court does fine him. When this atonement fine is imposed on him, he must pay whatever sum is imposed on him by the court as ransom for his life. According to one opinion, he must pay the victim’s heirs the victim’s value on the slave market; according to another opinion, he must pay them his own value on the slave market.

This law does not only apply to adult victims: if the ox gores and kills a boy or a girl, the owner must be dealt with according to the same law.

However, if the ox gores a non-Jewish bondman or bondwoman, the ox’s owner must pay a fixed fine of 30 silver shekels to his or her master – this being the average worth of a bondservant – but the ox must still be stoned.

The Pit
If a person removes the cover of a pit that had been properly covered, or digs an existing pit, deepening it, and does not cover it, and this pit is located in the public domain, and an ox, a donkey, or any other animal falls into it,

the one responsible for making the pit dangerous must make restitution. He is not liable, however, for damages suffered by people or utensils the animal may be carrying when it falls. The one responsible for the pit must restore the value of the animal to its owner, deducting the value of the animal’s carcass, since the carcass remains its owner’s property.

However, if the ox was known to have gored on at least three previous occasions and had thus been proven to be malicious, yet its owner did not guard it, and it attacked someone else’s ox and killed it, he must pay the full value of an ox in compensation for the ox, i.e., he must compensate the owner of the attacked ox for the full value of his loss, taking into consideration that the carcass remains its owner’s property. The owner of the attacking ox pays the owner of the attacked ox the value the ox had when alive minus its present value as a carcass.

Theft
If a person steals an ox, sheep, or goat and slaughters or sells it, and is witnessed and convicted of doing so, he must repay five oxen in place of the ox and four sheep or goats in place of the sheep or goat.

If a thief is caught while breaking in, and he is struck by someone guarding the property that he is attempting to steal and the thief dies, there is no bloodguilt in his case. For the thief knows full well that people will defend their property, so he runs the risk of mortal combat when he breaks in.

If, however, metaphorically, the sun shone on him, i.e., it is clear as day that he is uncontentious and will not kill the one guarding the property if opposed, it is an act of murder to kill him. Similarly, if there are witnesses present who warn the guard not to kill the thief, it is an act of murder to kill him, since the thief will not kill in the presence of witnesses. Nonetheless, the thief must make full restitution for what he steals. If the thief is a man, and he does not have the means to make restitution, he must be indentured as a bondman and the proceeds of his sale used to make restitution for his theft.

If the stolen article is found in his possession, whether it be an ox, a donkey, or a sheep or goat, and it is still alive – he did not slaughter or sell it – he must repay two live animals or their monetary value, and not four or five (if oxen or sheep/goats), in contrast to the rule stated above and in accordance with the rule that will be stated presently. Furthermore, if the thief admits his guilt on his own, he only has to repay what he stole, and is exempt from the double, quadruple, or quintuple fines.

Compensation for Damages
If a man takes his animals into someone else’s field or vineyard, and he lets them trample or graze in this other person’s field or vineyard, he must pay for the damages. If he wishes to pay for the damages with land rather than money, he must make restitution with the best of his field or the best of his vineyard.

If a fire breaks out – even accidentally – and spreads through thorns, so that it consumes stacked or standing grain or a newly-plowed field, hardening it so the owner has to plow it again, the one who kindled the fire must make restitution. Even though he started the fire on his own property, he did not take sufficient measures to prevent it from spreading onto someone else’s property, and is therefore liable for damages.

The Unpaid Consignee
If a man gives his fellowman money or objects for unpaid safekeeping, and the latter (the consignee) asserts that although he was not negligent in their care, they were nonetheless stolen from his house, if the thief is found he must make double restitution to the consigner.

But if the thief is not found, and the consigner accuses the consignee of stealing the goods himself, and the consignee admits that he took a portion of the goods but not all of them, then, the owner of the house – the consignee – must approach the judges to swear that he did not lay a hand on his fellowman’s property any more than he admits. By taking this oath, the consignee exempts himself from having to pay anything further to the consigner.

The Paid Consignee
If a man gives his fellowman a donkey, an ox, a sheep, or any other animal for paid safekeeping, and it dies naturally, is fatally maimed by a wild beast, or is carried off by robbers, and there are no eyewitnesses,

an oath to GOD must take place between the two of them: the consignee must swear that he did not lay a hand on his fellowman’s property to use it. For if he used it, he is no longer considered a ‘paid consignee’ but a ‘borrower’ and as such is responsible in these cases. But if he swears that he did not use it, the owner must accept the oath, and the consignee need not pay the consigner anything.

If, however, it was in fact stolen from him, he must make restitution to its owner. Unlike the unpaid consignee, the paid consignee is responsible for theft of property in his safekeeping.

If in fact it was killed by a wild beast, and this was witnessed, then the consignee need not swear to that effect; he must produce witnesses, and then he need not make restitution for the mauled animal. But in any case, the paid consignee is exempt from responsibility only if the consigner’s animal was attacked by an animal he could not contend with, such as a wolf, a lion, a bear, or a snake. But if it was attacked by an animal he could have deflected, such as a cat, a fox, or a marten, he is held responsible.

The Borrower and the Renter
If a person borrows something from his fellowman and it breaks or dies, and its owner was not employed by the borrower to work with him, the borrower must make restitution. Unlike the paid consignee, the borrower is responsible for accidental loss.

If, however, its owner was employed by the borrower to work with him, the borrower need not make restitution. In fact, the owner need not have been employed to do the same kind of work that the borrowed object or animal was borrowed for, and he need not have been employed at the moment the accident occurred. As long as the owner was in the borrower’s employ when he borrowed the object from him, the borrower is not responsible for accidental loss. If, in contrast, the article was rented, it has come into the renter’s service in exchange for its rental fee, and he is therefore not a borrower, and is not held responsible for accidental loss as the borrower is. However, there are two ways to conceive what the renter is responsible for: according to one, he is responsible only for negligence, as is the unpaid consignee; according to the other, he is responsible also for theft, as is the paid consignee.

Seduction
If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and engages in carnal relations with her, he must marry her with a marriage contract.

If she does not wish to marry him, or her father utterly refuses to give her to him in marriage, the seducer must weigh out money according to the customary monetary settlement of virgins, i.e., 50 shekels.

Sorcery
You must not allow a sorcerer or sorceress to live. He or she must be tried and executed by the court.

Bestiality
Whoever engages in carnal relations with an animal must be tried by the court and put to death by stoning.

Idolatry
Whoever sacrifices, offers up incense, pours a libation, or prostrates himself to idols must be tried by the court and put to death by stoning. Such forms of service are permitted only to GOD alone. Serving an idol in other ways, such as sweeping the floor in front of it, kissing it, etc., is punishable by death only if this is the way that particular idol is normally worshiped; otherwise, performing such acts is a non-capital offense and is punishable only by lashes.

Exploitation
You must not taunt a foreigner who has converted to Judaism nor oppress him by robbing him of money, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt, so he can easily taunt you back. Although it is forbidden to rob anyone, it is especially sinful to rob a convert.

You must not cause pain to anyone, but particularly not to any person with limited means of defending themselves against you, such as a widow or orphan.

If you do cause them pain, you will certainly be held accountable! For if a widow or orphan will urgently cry out to Me, I will certainly heed their cry and punish you measure for measure:

When a fellow Jew asks you for a loan and you are able to lend to him, you must do so. Therefore, when you lend money, if you have to choose between lending to a Jew or to a non-Jew, you should lend first to your fellow Jew, for he is a member of My chosen people. Furthermore, if you have to choose between lending to a rich person or a poor person, you should lend first to the poor person; if you have to choose between lending to a poor relative and another poor person, you should lend first to your poor relative; if you have to choose between lending to a local poor person or a distant poor person, you should lend first to the poor person in your locality. In any case, if the borrower cannot pay you back at the appointed time, you must not act toward him like a creditor, demanding payment; rather, act toward him as if he does not owe you money. Treat him respectfully, for he is still one of My people; put yourself in his place. Furthermore, you may not charge him interest.

If, when he does not pay you back at the appointed time, you repeatedly take your fellowman’s day-garment as collateral, you must return it to him every morning, letting him keep it until sunset,

for this alone is his outer cloak, or the inner garment for his skin. If you take his couch as collateral, you must also return it to him every morning, for if you do not, with what should he lie down to rest during the day? If you do not return these items, then when he cries out to Me, I will listen, for I am compassionate.

Respect for Authority
You must not curse God or a judge, nor may you curse a leader of your people, i.e., the king or the head of the Sanhedrin.

Donations Due to the Tribe of Levi
I will later command you to give the priests and Levites certain specific portions of your agricultural produce. Do not give these dues out of order; for example, you must not delay your tax of newly-ripened first fruits (bikurim) by giving the priests their portion of your olive oil, wine, and grain (terumah) first, nor may you delay your terumah by giving the Levites your tithes (ma’aser) first. As I have told you, you must present to Me the firstborn of your sons and redeem them by giving five shekels to a priest. Just as your firstborn sons are to be redeemed only after they are 30 days old,

you must do likewise with your oxen and your flocks: give your firstborn cattle to the priest only after they are 50 days old and your firstborn sheep and goats only after they are 30 days old. If you are a priest and you take a firstborn animal from a lay Israelite before the specified time, and you wish to offer it up as a sacrifice, it must remain with its mother for seven days, and only on the eighth day or later must you give it to Me.

Truth in Justice
You must not accept a false report from someone wishing to slander someone else. If you are a judge, you must not listen to one party’s arguments until the other party is also present. You must not join forces with a wicked person – i.e., someone planning to make a false claim against someone else – by even merely promising to be a corrupt witness on his behalf.

You must not show deference to a poor man in his lawsuit in order to give him the respect he usually does not get. Rather, you must judge the case according to the truth.

Behavior toward Enemies
If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you must return it to him, repeatedly if necessary.

When you see a donkey belonging to a fellow Jew whom you hate, and this donkey is crouching under its load, you must disregard your hatred and help the person unload his donkey. You are permitted to not help the person if doing so is beneath your dignity, if you are not strong enough – for example, if you are an elder, or if the person has tried to entice others to serve idols. In all other cases, however, would you refrain from helping him just because there are cases in which you are allowed not to?! Rather, you must help the person you hate unload his donkey.

You must not pervert justice for your destitute countryman in his lawsuit.

You must distance yourself from any falsehood. You must not execute a possibly innocent person: If, in a capital case, someone was convicted in court and then a witness to his innocence appears, you must retry him. On the other hand, you must not execute an acquitted person: if he was acquitted in court and then a witness to his guilt appears, you must not retry him. Do not be zealous for justice in such a case, for I will not exonerate the wicked. If he is indeed guilty, I have many ways to make sure he gets the punishment he deserves.

You must not accept a bribe, even from the party who is in the right, for bribery blinds the clear-sighted and distorts the way you apply the Torah’s words of righteousness. Someone who accepts bribery will eventually become confused, forget all the Torah he has learned, and even lose his eyesight.

You must not oppress a foreigner who has converted to Judaism; you know the feelings of a foreigner, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. Although I have already said this, I repeat it for emphasis. You must be very careful not to oppress converts, because they may be prone to abandon Judaism if they are mistreated.

The Sabbatical Year
For six years you may sow your land and gather in its crops,

but during the seventh year you must leave your field untended by not working it and withdraw from it by not taking care of it. Furthermore, as soon as a particular type of produce has been eaten up by undomesticated animals in the field, you must remove whatever of that type of produce you have stored away for your own animals and place it in the field so it becomes available for all animals equally. In the Sabbatical year, all of you, even the needy among your people, may eat its produce the same way that the beasts of the field eat whatever is left – without obligation to give a tithe (ma’aser) to the Levites. You must do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.

Active Commandments and Prohibitions
You must be vigilant in everything I have instructed you. I say this in order to make all ‘active’ commandments into prohibitions as well: when I tell you to do something, I am at the same time telling you not to refrain from doing it or do it differently. You must not mention the names of other peoples’ deities; for example, you must not say to someone, ‘wait for me next to this or that idol’ or ‘on the holiday of this or that idol.’ Nor may your mouth cause the names of others’ gods to be heard from an idolater: do not engage an idolater in business, for then he will be apt to swear in his idol’s name. Serving idols is as serious an offense as transgressing all the commandments together, and refraining from serving idols earns as much merit as observing all the commandments together.

Just as the Sabbatical year does not render the weekly Sabbath superfluous, neither does it nullify the festivals, even though they are associated with the agricultural cycle and you will not be working the earth in the Sabbatical year. Thus, even during the Sabbatical year, you must celebrate a pilgrim festival for Me three times a year by congregating in the Temple-city, offering up specified sacrifices, observing specified rites, and partially refraining from work, as follows:

You must observe Passover, the Festival of Matzos. For seven days you must eat matzos as I have commanded you, at the appointed time in Nisan, the month of the beginning of the grain-ripening, for in that season you left Egypt. When you congregate at the Temple for the pilgrim festivals, you must not appear before Me empty-handed. You must bring an animal and sacrifice it as an ascent-offering.

Three times a year all your menfolk must appear before Me, GOD, the Master of the World – even during the Sabbatical year.

You must not sacrifice My Passover blood-sacrifice in the presence of leavened bread, i.e., before you have removed all leavened bread from your possession. The fat portions of My festival offering that must be burned on the Altar must have begun to be burned at least during the night following the day on which the sacrifice was offered up. These portions may not be left off the Altar overnight until morning, for if they are, they invalidate the entire sacrifice.

Mixing Milk and Meat
Even though you must rest from working the earth during the Sabbatical year, you must still bring the first-ripened fruits and produce of your land to the House of GOD, your God, as you do every year. This obligation applies only to the seven types of produce by which the Land of Israel is distinguished: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates. You must not eat a young animal of the goats, sheep, or cows that has been cooked in either its mother’s milk or in the milk of any other animal you are permitted to eat. This is an act of cruelty, and it is forbidden to be cruel.

For if you will diligently obey him and thus do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and persecute your persecutors.

For My angel will go before you and bring you to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will annihilate them. The Girgashites, in contrast, will flee of their own accord, so I will not have to annihilate them.

You must not prostrate yourselves to their gods nor serve them, nor may you follow their practices; rather, you must shatter their idols and demolish the pillars they have set up to worship as idols.

Rather, you must serve Me, GOD, your God, and in reward for not serving idols, I will bless your bread and your water, and I will also remove illness from your midst.

In reward for doing all that I say, I will not only drive out the inhabitants of the Land of Israel, allowing you to settle it; in addition, I will grant it a unique quality: no woman in your land will miscarry, outlive her children, or be barren. Outside the land, these blessings will accrue only to the individual who fulfills My will, not to the whole populace. Similarly, if you fulfill My will anywhere in the world, I will grant you the full count of your days; you will not die prematurely.

I will send forth a dread of Me before you, sow confusion among all the people into whose midst you are coming, and make all your enemies flee from you.

I will send wasps ahead of you that will wound the enemy’s eyes and inject them with deadly poison. These wasps inhabit the east bank of the Jordan River and will not cross it westward, so they will only be able to drive out before you the Hivites, who live close to the west bank of the river, by miraculously firing their poison at them, and the Canaanites and the Hittites, who live on the east bank of the river.

I will not drive out the inhabitants of the Land of Israel from before you in a single year, lest the land become desolate and the wild animals outnumber you, for at this point, there are not enough of you to populate the whole land.

Rather, I will drive them out before you little by little, until you increase and are able to occupy the whole land.

Even though I postponed My original promise to Abraham concerning the territories of the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites, I am now reinstating this promise. Thus, when you enter the land, I will set your borders from the Sea of Reeds to the Philistine [i.e., Mediterranean] Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River, for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hands, and you will drive them out from before you.

You must not make a covenant with them nor with their deities.

They must not dwell in your land, lest they cause you to sin against Me by serving their deities, which would prove to be a snare to you.”

He had the people ritually immerse themselves in preparation for having sacrificial blood dashed on them. He then dispatched the firstborn young men of the Israelites and they offered up ascent-offerings and slaughtered bulls as peace-promoting feast-offerings to GOD on this altar.

The Covenant
In order to express the fact that this covenant bound God and the people as two halves of a whole, God planned to have Moses dash half of the blood of each type of sacrifice on the people; this would be equivalent to passing between the two types of blood. In order to emphasize the covenantal significance of this act, God sent an angel to divide the two types of blood in half. Moses then took half the blood and put it into two large bowls, one containing half the blood of the ascent-offerings and one containing half the blood of the peace-offerings. He dashed the other half of the blood onto the altar directly from the basins in which the firstborn collected it when they slaughtered the animals. Completing the sacrificial rites with the blood in the basins officially made the other blood (that remained in the two large bowls) into ascent-offering blood and peace-offering blood, as well.

Moses then took the scroll he wrote the previous day, and which now became known as the Book of the Covenant, and read it aloud to the people. The people responded, “We will do and we will learn everything that GOD has spoken.”

The people having thus bound themselves to God, Moses could complete the rite that would seal the covenant. Moses took the blood that he had put in the two large bowls, and dashed it on the people, thus effectively having them pass between the two types of blood. Moses then said, “This is the blood of the covenant that GOD has made with you regarding all these words.”

As mentioned, on 4 Sivan, Moses went partway up the mountain, as did Aaron, Nadav, and Avihu, and 70 of Israel’s elders, to prostrate themselves from afar, as God had told them to.

But after Moses entered the thick cloud surrounding the mountaintop, Nadav, Avihu, and the elders attempted to follow him with their sight – which they did not have permission to do – and they thus had a vision of the God of Israel. They saw, figuratively, that beneath God’s feet there was the likeness of a brick of sapphire, which had been in front of Him during the people’s slavery as brick makers, signifying His awareness of their suffering, while around Him was an appearance like the clearness of the cloudless heavens, for when the people were redeemed from slavery God rejoiced.

Moses arose, along with Joshua, his attendant. Moses ascended the Mountain of God, while Joshua accompanied Moses as far as he was permitted to, i.e., up to the fence surrounding the mountain. He pitched his tent and stayed there for the entire 40 days, awaiting Moses’ return.

Moses ascended partway up the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain.

The glory of GOD rested on Mount Sinai, which the cloud covered for six days, and on the seventh day He called out to Moses from the midst of the cloud. These were the first seven days of the 40-day period of Moses’ stay on the mountain.

In the eyes of the Israelites, the appearance of the glory of GOD during these 40 days was like a consuming fire on the mountaintop. This fire, consuming the rocks and dirt on the mountain, produced a cloud of smoke in addition to the regular cloud of water vapor that already covered the mountain.

Since smoke clouds are sooty, God made a path for Moses in this cloud so his face and clothing would not become soiled by passing through it. Moses entered the smoke cloud through this path and ascended to the top of the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights.