Three days, therefore, were now devoted to preparatory and ceremonial ablutions, during which the people were commanded to abstain from all sensual and worldly enjoyments. Then bounds were set round the mountain on which a God of Holiness was about to appear, lest any of the people should ascend or even touch it. Of any infringement of this prohibition death was denounced as the certain penalty, and that not inflicted in the usual way, lest the executioners should themselves be polluted, but from a distance with stones and arrows (Ex. xix. 12, 13; Heb. xii. 20). At length the morning of the third day dawned, and the awful silence of the mountain-sanctuary was broken by peals of thunder, which echoed and re-echoed amidst the rocky gorges, while flashes of lightning lit up the peaks of Sinai, and revealed by their contrast the pitchy darkness and the thick cloud which had settled upon the mountain-top. Presently the Voice _as of a Trumpet_ (comp. Rev. i. 10, iv. 1), sounded exceeding loud, audible even above the crash of the thunder, so that every soul in the camp trembled. This was the signal God had made known to Moses, who straightway led forth the people out of the camp _to meet with God, and they stood at the nether part of the mount_, which appeared _altogether on a smoke, like the smoke of a furnace_, enshrouding a mysterious flame in which the Lord descended (Ex. xix. 18). Again the Trumpet pealed with a long-continued blast, and _waxed louder and louder, and Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice_, summoning him to meet Him on the top of Sinai. Arrived there, he was commanded again to warn the people, and even the priests, against drawing too near, or breaking through the bounds that had been set about the mount for the purpose of indulging any profane gaze, and so incurring the inevitable penalty of death (Ex. xix. 21). Moses therefore returned to the awestruck crowd on the plain below, and renewed the solemn warning. Then _from out of the midst of the fire, and the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a great voice_ (Deut. v. 22), JEHOVAH Himself spake to the assembled host _face to face_, and proclaimed the Ten fundamental Words of the law of the Covenant. Not as the Lord of the universe, or the Creator of all things, did the Most High now reveal Himself to the people, but as their Redeemer, who had _brought them out of the land of Egypt, and from the house of bondage_ (Ex. xx. 2). (I) _Beside Him_, therefore, they were to have _no other god_; (II) _of Him_ they were to make no _representation_, or construct any _graven image_, or any _likeness_ in the form of anything either in the heaven above or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth; (III) for His _Name_ they were to entertain the deepest reverence, nor profane it by taking it in vain; (IV) His _Day_, the seventh Day, _the Day of rest_, they were ever to observe; six days they might labour, and do all their work, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord