3
things that are destructive to Israels relationship with God (e.g., worshiping other gods, moral
breeches that offend God). It promotes things that cultivate a proper relationship with God (e.g.
festivals, right kinds of worship activities, righteous behaviors that please God). The
fundamental obligation of Israel was to love God (Deut 6:4); the law defines what shape a loving
response to God should take. Thus obedience to the law was an expression of faith that
cultivated Israels, and the individual Israelites, relationship with God. For Israel, a personal
relationship with God "places every facet of life under faithful response to God,"
5
for which
reason the laws cover various aspects of life: moral, social and religious.
The laws context in the narrative of Gods establishing a personal relationship with
Israel then explains the frequent use of first and second person personal pronouns, I-Thou
language, in the laws of Exodus 20-23. This personal language thus shows the laws to be more
than a list of "dos and donts." They are part of Gods personal message to his people meant to
deepen their personal relationship with him.
The narrator introduces the Decalogue (Exod 20:1-17) in the context of the theophany at
Sinai (Exodus 19) where God employs I-Thou language as he offers Israel a covenant with
himself on the condition "if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant" (Exod 19:5). The
words introducing the Decalogue, "God spoke all these words saying" (Exod 20:1) links back to
Exod 19:5 by supplying some of the commands that God expects of a people in covenant
relationship with himself to "obey" and "keep." The words of the Decalogue that follows are
full of I-Thou language that shows this to be Yahwehs personal address to his people: "I am
Yahweh your God who released you from the land of Egypt" (v. 2); "You are to have no other
gods besides me" (v. 3); "you are not to make for yourself an image" (v. 4); "I Yahweh your
God am a jealous God" (v. 5); "You are not to take the name of Yahweh your God in vain" (v.
6), etc. The you in each case is masculine singular, referring to national Israel personified in
corporate personality which as a group had been offered the covenant in chapter 19, though no
5
Bratcher, "Torah as Holiness," n.p.