1“At that time YHWH said to me, ‘Carve two tablets of stones like the first ones, and come up to me at the mountain. And you shall make an ark of wood.
10:1. you shall make an ark of wood. It says “you shall make,” but in Exodus it was Bezalel, not Moses, who made the ark. Rashi and Ramban and others therefore say that there must have been two arks. In current critical scholarship, the apparent contradiction would generally be taken to be a result of the fact that this text in Deuteronomy and the text in Exodus were written by two different authors. But, even without raising such solutions that are arrived at through critical approaches, we can understand Moses’ words in Deuteronomy to be a brief account of what happened at Sinai, and so he speaks of himself as making the ark when he means that he directed Bezalel to do it. Likewise, he speaks of the ark as if it were finished and ready when he came down from the mountain when he knows that actually some time passed before the ark was made. J. H. Hertz proposed such an understanding as an alternative to Rashi’s and Ramban’s view even though Hertz harshly rejected literary-critical scholarship. This is important because an almost fundamentalist view of Rashi is growing at present in some communities, wherein it is practically heresy to question Rashi. This gives Rashi a status that I do not think he would have wanted for himself. And certainly the commentators of the generations that followed him, including his own grandson Rashbam, were prepared to question his comments. We respect and admire the great commentators of past generations, but we should never forget to distinguish between Torah and commentary. The goal of refining our knowledge of the Torah and shedding new light from it in each new age is never-ending; and our commentaries—including my own—are always subject to criticism and improvement.
2And I’ll write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you shattered, and you shall set them in the ark.’
3“And I made an ark of acacia wood, and I carved two tablets of stones like the first ones, and I went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hands.
4And He wrote on the tablets like the first writing: the Ten Commandments that YHWH spoke to you at the mountain from inside the fire in the day of the assembly, and YHWH gave them to me.
10:4. the Ten Commandments. Hebrew ‘
eret hadd
b
rîm, literally, the ten things. This is what the Ten Commandments are called in Hebrew.
5And I turned and went down from the mountain, and I set the tablets in the ark that I had made, and they have been there, as YHWH commanded me.
6“And the children of Israel had traveled from Beeroth-bene-Jaakan to Moserah. There Aaron died, and he was buried there; and Eleazar, his son, functioned as priest in his place.
7From there they traveled to Gudgod, and from Gudgod to Jotbah, a land of wadis of water.
8At that time YHWH distinguished the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of YHWH’s covenant, to stand in front of YHWH to serve Him, and to bless in His name to this day.
9Therefore Levi has not had a portion and a legacy with its brothers. YHWH: He is its legacy, as YHWH, your God, spoke to it.
10“And I: I stood in the mountain as in the first days: forty days and forty nights. And YHWH listened to me that time as well. YHWH was not willing to destroy you.
10:10. And I. Moses now resumes his account of his second forty days on Horeb, which had left off at 9:29. He had interrupted his story with mention of the ark and other matters.
11And YHWH said to me, ‘Get up. Set out on the journey in front of the people, and they’ll come and take possession of the land that I swore to their fathers to give to them.’
12“And now, Israel, what is YHWH, your God, asking from you except to fear YHWH, your God, to go in all His ways, and to love Him and to serve YHWH, your God, with all your heart and all your soul,
10:12. what is God asking from you. All the things that follow in this verse have been mentioned already in Moses’ speech. They come now, therefore, as a summary, a statement of the basic things that underlie everything else: fear, love, deeds, service, complete commitment.
13to observe YHWH’s commandments and His laws that I command you today to be good for you.
14Here, YHWH, your God, has the skies—and the skies of the skies!—the earth and everything that’s in it.
10:14. the skies of the skies. Meaning, presumably, that if one were in the sky and looked up, one would see a farther portion of the sky. So the phrase means the farthest reaches of the sky.
15Only, YHWH was attracted to your fathers, to love them, and He chose their seed after them: you, out of all the peoples, as it is this day.
16So you shall circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and you shall not harden your necks anymore.
10:16. the foreskin of your heart. This concept occurs in two books of the Torah (Deut 10:16; 30:6; Lev 26:41) and in two of the prophets (Jer 4:4; Ezek 44:7,9). The sign of the Abrahamic covenant, and probably the most commonly observed of the commandments by Jewish families for centuries, is circumcision. But the Torah commands the circumcision of one’s heart as well. It establishes that outward fulfillment of practices without also feeling it in one’s heart is insufficient. The concept of circumcising one’s heart, moreover, unlike physical circumcision, applies to both women and men.
17Because YHWH, your God: He is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who won’t be partial and won’t take a bribe,
10:17. the God of gods and the Lord of lords. Admittedly, this sounds unmonotheistic, seemingly acknowledging the existence of other gods. But, earlier, Moses has said, “YHWH: He is God. There is no other outside of Him” (4:35) and “YHWH is one” (6:4). And, later, YHWH says, “There is no god with me” (32:39). How are we to reconcile the many monotheistic passages in Deuteronomy with “God of gods and Lord of lords”? As in the case of not having “other gods before my face,” this is a linguistic matter. “God of gods” is an expression for conveying that YHWH is something that all other gods in whom people believe are not. It need not presume that such other gods exist.
10:17. won’t take a bribe. What could it mean to bribe God?! A sacrifice, a donation, a kindness, charity, prayer: one might do any of these to win the deity’s favor, rather than doing them as fulfillment of the commandments or as free acts. Moses informs the people that this will not work.
18doing judgment for an orphan and a widow and loving an alien, to give him bread and a garment.
19So you shall love the alien, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
20You shall fear YHWH, your God, you shall serve Him, and you shall cling to Him, and you shall swear by His name.
21He is your splendor, and He is your God, who did these great and awesome things for you that your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt with seventy persons, and now YHWH, your God, has made you like the stars of the skies for multitude.
