There Moses also led them into a more secret initiation. Through wonders beyond explanation, divine power itself was initiating both the whole people and their leader. The initiation took place in this way. The people were told to keep themselves free from every defilement of body and soul, to purify themselves with ritual washings, and for a stated number of days to abstain even from marital relations. After washing away every inclination ruled by passion or the body, they were to approach the mountain free from passion and ready to be initiated.
The mountain was called Sinai. At that time only beings endowed with reason were permitted to ascend it; among them, only men; and among the men, only those purified from every defilement. Every precaution was taken to keep any animal without reason from going up the mountain. If one appeared there, whatever animal it was, the people were to stone it.
Then the brightness of the clear sky darkened into deep gloom until the mountain became invisible, enclosed on every side by darkness. Fire shone out from the darkness and made the sight terrifying to those who watched. It spread all around the mountain, and everything visible seemed to smolder with smoke as the fire ran beneath it.
Moses led the people toward the ascent. Yet even he did not face what he saw without fear. His soul was overwhelmed with dread and his body shook, and he did not hide this from the Israelites. He admitted to them that the sight terrified him and that his body was trembling.
Nor was the sight alone enough to strike terror into the soul through the eyes. Terrifying sounds also came through the ears. A voice from above burst over everything below with overwhelming force. Even its first sound was harsh and hard for any ear to bear. It resembled a trumpet, yet in its terrifying force it surpassed every such comparison. And as it continued it became still more fearful, its sound constantly growing more intense.
The voice formed distinct words. By divine power, the air itself shaped speech without any organs of speech. Nor did it speak at random: it laid down divine commands. As the voice continued it kept increasing, the trumpet-like sound surpassing itself as each new sound exceeded the one before it.
The whole people were unable to endure what they were seeing and hearing. So they all made the same request of Moses: they asked that the law be given to them through him. They would not doubt that whatever Moses commanded in accordance with the teaching from above was a command from God.
Everyone then ran back down to the foot of the mountain, leaving Moses alone. And in this he showed something opposite to what might have been expected from his earlier fear. Other people are normally more confident in the face of terrifying things when they have companions beside them. Moses, however, became more courageous when he was alone than when others stood with him. This showed that the fear that had seized him at first was not his own feeling, but something he experienced out of sympathy with those who were terrified.
Once Moses was alone, stripped as it were of the burden of the people’s fear, he dared to enter the darkness itself. He passed into what could not be seen and was no longer visible to those watching. Having entered the inexpressible initiation into the divine mysteries, he was there with the Invisible, himself unseen.
By what he did, I think, he teaches that anyone who intends to be with God must pass beyond everything that can be seen. He must raise his mind, as though to the summit of a mountain, toward what is invisible and beyond comprehension, and believe that God is there where understanding cannot reach.
Once there, Moses received the divine commands. They were instruction in virtue, whose foundation is reverence for God and holding fitting beliefs about the divine nature. The divine nature lies beyond every concept or image by which we know things and is like nothing that can be known.
The command therefore forbids us, when thinking about God, to look to anything we can comprehend or to compare the nature that lies beyond all things with anything known through comprehension. We are to believe that God exists, but leave unasked what He is like, how great He is, where He comes from, or how He exists, because these things are beyond our reach.
The account also adds the moral practices that belong to a good life, teaching them through laws both general and specific. There is a general law that abolishes every kind of injustice: we must treat our fellow human beings with love. Once that is firmly established, it necessarily follows that no one will do anything evil to a neighbor. The specific laws command honor for parents and list the wrongs that are forbidden.