I've decided that I'd like to do a little bit of scriptural reflection on here, what with this being about theology (and for other reasons I'll talk about sometime). For that reason I've done my "own" translation of the Ten Commandments (from Exodus 20) and want to think a bit about them. I did this translating with the help of Bibleworks (because I am lazy), partially because I am not fluent in the language. Mistakes are my own, and to that end I encourage a comparison of the NRSV text with my translation. I made conscious decisions in the translation which influence the Hebrew in ways I think mirror the intention of the text, but this is a big foul in translation. It might be better to call the below an interpretation along the lines of Peterson's Message translation.
The first part of the passage is "And Elohim spoke to them", and I would just like to take a post to talk about that phrase. The word "and" follows the return of Moses from the top of Horeb/Sinai (depending on who you ask, though it's Sinai in the Exodus narrative). It's important to realize that Moses returns from the mountaintop, and God directly addresses the people as a whole. There is absolutely no ambiguity about these words or where they come from.
"Elohim" is a transliteration of the Hebrew, normally translated as "God". However, elohim is actually the plural for el, which is the singular masculine root which would ordinarily be used in Hebrew grammar for the word "god". There are several ways to think about this word, and honestly I don't have the academic chops for going into the Hebrew in detail. But here I have only transliterated the word because it communicates that this term is special, and also because it preserves the foreignness of the idea of God both for humanity and for us in our modern context, when the word "god" is thrown around sufficiently that it would rarely be considered a proper name by an English speaker.
The phrase "spoke to them" is a single word in the Hebrew, indicating both the action, the tense, and the object of the action. In this phrase is nearly the entire witness of the Biblical narrative. God has not waited for the people to come up, but has spoken from the mountaintop to them. God has no intention of being remote; indeed, God has traveled from Egypt with the people, personally and profoundly with them. God now speaks with them. In this, and in many other places, the main point of the Bible is brought home. Don't let the commandments distract from this point, for in it is all the grace we will ever have or need. For God speaks to us, as well.
The first part of the passage is "And Elohim spoke to them", and I would just like to take a post to talk about that phrase. The word "and" follows the return of Moses from the top of Horeb/Sinai (depending on who you ask, though it's Sinai in the Exodus narrative). It's important to realize that Moses returns from the mountaintop, and God directly addresses the people as a whole. There is absolutely no ambiguity about these words or where they come from.
"Elohim" is a transliteration of the Hebrew, normally translated as "God". However, elohim is actually the plural for el, which is the singular masculine root which would ordinarily be used in Hebrew grammar for the word "god". There are several ways to think about this word, and honestly I don't have the academic chops for going into the Hebrew in detail. But here I have only transliterated the word because it communicates that this term is special, and also because it preserves the foreignness of the idea of God both for humanity and for us in our modern context, when the word "god" is thrown around sufficiently that it would rarely be considered a proper name by an English speaker.
The phrase "spoke to them" is a single word in the Hebrew, indicating both the action, the tense, and the object of the action. In this phrase is nearly the entire witness of the Biblical narrative. God has not waited for the people to come up, but has spoken from the mountaintop to them. God has no intention of being remote; indeed, God has traveled from Egypt with the people, personally and profoundly with them. God now speaks with them. In this, and in many other places, the main point of the Bible is brought home. Don't let the commandments distract from this point, for in it is all the grace we will ever have or need. For God speaks to us, as well.
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