trembled." Moses had undoubtedly sent some thoroughly trustworthy person,
probably Joshua, up the mountain to blow a ram's horn and to light a
bonfire, and the effect seems to have been excellent.

"And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended
upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace,
and the whole mount quaked greatly.

"And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and
louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice.

"And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mount; and the
Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up." And the
first thing that Moses did on behalf of the Lord was to "charge the
people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them
perish."

And Moses replied to God's enquiry, "The people cannot come up to Mount
Sinai: for thou chargedst us, saying, Set bounds about the mount.

"And the Lord said unto him, Away, get thee down, and thou shalt come up,
thou, and Aaron with thee: but let not the priests and the people break
through to come up unto the Lord, lest he break forth upon them.

"So Moses went down unto the people, and spake unto them."

Whether the decalogue, as we know it, was a code of law actually delivered
upon Sinai, which German critics very much dispute as being inconsistent
with the stage of civilization at which the Israelites had arrived, but
which is altogether kindred to the Babylonish law with which Moses was