Bible Challenge - the Ten Commandments

Bible Challenge Week Three

We are reading the first 24 chapters of the book of Exodus this week.

If you have seen the movie the Ten Commandments, you basically have the story that we are reading this week.

We start with the people of Israel kept as slaves in Egypt - they call to the Lord and the Lord, eventually, finds Moses.

Moses is the least likely champion of the people of Israel that any one could think of.  While he was a member of the tribe of Levi, he had not been raised among the people of Israel - he had really been raised as an Egyptian noble and he had fled from Egypt to avoid the consequences of a murder that he committed.

There are lots of things in this story - but I want to highlight two:

First - at the meeting of Moses with God in the burning bush, Moses asks who God is and God says, what get translated into English as "I am that I am".  Hebrew verb tenses are much more fluid than English ones - so this could as easily be translated  "I am that I was" or "I was that which I will become" or "I am becoming that which I am".  In other words - our God is not defined by time or space.

Second - when you see Christian depictions of the 10 commandments, they usually have 5 on one tablet and 5 on the other.  When you see Jewish depictions of the 10 commandments they have four on one tablet and six on the other.  That is because the first four commandments are about our relationship with God.  The last six are about our relationships with each other.

What do you think?