| |
| LO, this is the law that I gave you, | |
| Who called you to honor My name: | |
| (From the sweltering Nile did I bring you | |
| And lead you by cloud and by rain, | |
| Even here unto this lonely Horeb, | 5 |
| Where I, all enthroned do abide) | |
| That you might be known as my people, | |
| Espoused unto me as a bride. | |
| |
| O’er shimmering plains have I led you | |
| As caravans pilgriming south, | 10 |
| ’Mid swirling simoons and sand-storms | |
| To languish and thirst in the drought. | |
| I led your host steadily onward— | |
| And the walls of the Red Sea I clove | |
| Lest ye halt a day in your journey, | 15 |
| Fear-stricken as sheep in a drove. | |
| |
| And here have I brought you to Sinai | |
| Where the silence and awe of the hills | |
| Descends as the night with its terror, | |
| And the void with its grim darkness fills— | 20 |
| That here all alone and a-trembling | |
| You may list to the words that I speak: | |
| Though My words ride the wind and the thunder | |
| Yet the contrite of heart do I seek. | |
| |
| And ye have I raised as an emblem | 25 |
| And made you My sign to the world; | |
| Wherever ye dwell, do I sojourn, | |
| And there is My purpose unfurled: | |
| For you are My law to the peoples; | |
| Your ways are the paths I have trod— | 30 |
| In you is revealed My own being | |
| And through you Man knows I am God. | |
| |
| My glory is hung on these mountains, | |
| That ’neath them, encamped you may see | |
| The luminous tables I’ve graven | 35 |
| With truth that will make all men free. | |
| For you I turned flint into fountains | |
| Whose waters o’er thirsty fields rolled— | |
| You are Mine, e’en though you belie Me; | |
| You are Mine whom I summoned of old. | 40 |
| |
| You are Mine, though I load you with burdens | |
| And lash you with woe and with pain. | |
| I will send you from hence to all peoples, | |
| To hunger and want to be slain. | |
| I charge you to go among nations | 45 |
| And teach both the high and the meek, | |
| That I am the I am Eternal | |
| And those who seek Me do I seek. | |
| |
| I gave you these tables of granite | |
| And the letters of each are writ large; | 50 |
| And you are to bear them and do them | |
| Forever to keep them in charge; | |
| To die for them, yea, if it must be, | |
| But never to sell them for pelf— | |
| But the law that is largest among them | 55 |
| Is that law which each makes for himself. | |
| |
| Oh, hear as this old mountain rumbles | |
| As if it were shivering with dread. | |
| To the living I call as my servants, | |
| Who bury their past and their dead: | 60 |
| Who serves each one in his fashion, | |
| In justice and love, I decree | |
| Is living My law among peoples | |
| And harkened forever to Me. | |
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