Original Torah: Ancient Words in a Modern Light

Encounter at Sinai
What did Moses teach us at Sinai? I offer below a radical understanding.

25 And Moses went down to the people and spoke to them. 20:1 God spoke all these words, saying:

This is the quote that precedes the Ten Statements. It seems cut off in the middle. Did Moses quote the Ten Statements or did God say them? Do we read it as “Moses spoke to the people saying “God said these things explicitly”". Or does the Torah not record what Moses said and go straight into the revelation. Either way, we have a problem in the text. I will below examine how the Ten Statements may be Moses teaching the judges God’s basic principles.

Who Does Moses Teach?
In this week’s parashah, Moses is having difficulty teaching all the Israelites God’s “laws and teachings, hukei haElohim veEt Torotav” (18:13-16). When the people seek God, Moses makes God’s “laws and teaching” known by deciding disputes (18:15-16), but there are too many disputes for him to solve. So, it seems that Moses might have spoken the Ten Statements to the people as a way of deciding case law. However, only half the commandments can decide laws between man and man “bein adam lehavero, מצוות שבין אדם לחברו“. The first five may be fundamental religious principles ( מצוות שבין אדם למקום ).

In order to teach the “laws and teachings” to the people, Moses’s father-in-law, Yitro, recommends to

18:20 enjoin upon them the laws and the teachings, and make known to them the way they are to go and the practices they are to follow. 21 You shall also seek out from among all the people capable men who fear God, trustworthy men who spurn ill-gotten gain
כ וְהִזְהַרְתָּ֣ה אֶתְהֶ֔ם אֶת־הַֽחֻקִּ֖ים וְאֶת־הַתּוֹרֹ֑ת וְהֽוֹדַעְתָּ֣ לָהֶ֗ם אֶת־הַדֶּ֨רֶךְ֙ יֵ֣לְכוּ בָ֔הּ וְאֶת־הַֽמַּעֲשֶׂ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר יַֽעֲשֽׂוּן׃ כא וְאַתָּ֣ה תֶֽחֱזֶ֣ה מִכָּל־הָ֠עָם אַנְשֵׁי־חַ֜יִל יִרְאֵ֧י אֱלֹהִ֛ים אַנְשֵׁ֥י אֱמֶ֖ת שֹׂ֣נְאֵי בָ֑צַע וְשַׂמְתָּ֣ עֲלֵהֶ֗ם שָׂרֵ֤י אֲלָפִים֙ שָׂרֵ֣י מֵא֔וֹת שָׂרֵ֥י חֲמִשִּׁ֖ים וְשָׂרֵ֥י עֲשָׂרֹֽת׃

Qualities of a Teacher
We see that there are three categories of people fit to maintain a knowledge of the “laws and teachings, Torah”. These are people to whom Moses is to delegate his authority. The “Anshe Hayil Yir’ei Elohim” are the noble, capable people, assertive and charismatic who fear God, and hence are moral. The “Anshe Emet” are People of Truth, trustworthy people. The “Sonei Betsa” are Haters of Ill-Gotten Gain (see note). So, we see that the people that Moses delegates to decide the minor cases (18:22-26) are people capable of good, trusted to do good, and not corruptible.

Response to Ten Statements
However, the response to the Ten Statements was not philosophical, but visceral (20:15-16). They thought they would die. God had been answering Moses’s words with thunderclaps (19:19). And Moses reassures them that the Revelation is merely a test

20:17 “in order that the fear of Him may be ever with you, so that you do not go astray.”

Fear is not logical, and hence it is a dangerous means of organizing society. But, for the Torah, the Revelation at Sinai is meant to instill fear so that they understand the greatness of God on a basic level.

Who Spoke the Ten Statements?
Which brings us back to our original question: Did Moses speak the Ten Statements to the people, or did God, and how does this relate to the message at Sinai? If God spoke them, then the people were directly informed of God’s will, not a good model for future generations as it’s not repeatable. Plus, the text doesn’t account for what Moses said. However, if Moses spoke them, then prophesy remains the domain of the few with Moses being an accessible source of Torah for the many. This model makes more sense to me.

Most of us do not experience God in a directly manifest way. But we may still want to follow God’s/Godly teachings. If the Israelites at Sinai had an accessible source of information when they wanted to know God’s will, then we have that same source, because Moses commanded us the Torah which contains those teachings (Dt 33:4). We are a community centered around Torah, led by leaders who follow in the tradition of Moses (Avot 1:1) by being capable and moral, trustworthy, and proactive/incorruptible.

The Jewish tradition advocates living a good life, based on knowledge of the Torah, transmitted from generation to generation by noble leaders, who respect and love the Torah. What we heard at Sinai may have been a man speaking, but his words were truly divine.

Ten Statements

Rabbinically known as the Aseret Dibrot, עשרת הדיברות, called the Aseret Devarim in the Torah are called the Decalogue in Greek. I am using the literal sense of Aseret haDevarim, Decalogue, in my translation as Ten Statements rather than Ten Utterances or Ten Commandments. The first commandment in the Jewish counting is “I am the Lord your God”, something difficult to see as a command. Hence, the literal Ten Statements.

hukei haElohim veEt Torotav

Hukim are laws on the books, Torot are teachings/Torahs. The verb leHorot means to show or teach. Hence, Moses is teaching both the legal laws and how to understand them.

Yitro

Jethro in English, has the same name as the Beverly Hillbilly. However, Zipporah’s father seems more culturally attuned.

Sonei Betsa

Interestingly, these three categories all begin with “Anshe, people” if the third category is seen as an anagram of Sonei. This particularly makes sense because the piel verb betsa בצע means someone who can executes, carries out, performs along with the noun betsa בצע which means profit, and may only have taken on the negative meaning of ill-gotten profit later. It would be a conservative emendation to just switch the two letters, shin and alef, to make anshei אנשי into sonei שנאי. This would make the three qualities of people: capable and moral, trustworthy, and proactive. However, incorruptible still works well with the theme, even though it might be redundant with yire elohim/fear God.