He did not even then trust His precepts to the memory of a people who were prone to forget His requirements, but wrote them upon tables of stone. He would remove from Israel all possibility of mingling heathen traditions with His holy precepts, or of confounding His requirements with human ordinances or customs. But He did not stop with giving them the precepts of the Decalogue. The people had shown themselves so easily led astray that He would leave no door of temptation unguarded. Moses was commanded to write, as God should bid him, judgments and laws giving minute instruction as to what was required. These directions relating to the duty of the people to God, to one another, and to the stranger were only the principles of the Ten Commandments amplified and given in a specific manner, that none need err. They were designed to guard the sacredness of the ten precepts engraved on the tables of stone.

Selv ikke på det tidspunkt stolede han på, at dette folk, som var så tilbøjeligt til at glemme hans krav, ville huske hans forskrifter. Han skrev dem derfor på stentavler. Han ville fjerne enhver mulighed for, at Israel skulle kunne blande hedningernes traditioner sammen med hans hellige bud eller forveksle hans krav med menneskelige påbud eller skikke. Men han nøjedes ikke med at give dem de ti bud. Det havde været så let at lede folket vild, at han ikke ville lade nogen af fristelsens indfaldsveje ubevogtet. Moses fik befaling til at skrive bestemmelser og love efter Guds anvisning. Disse indeholdt nøjagtig vejledning om, hvad der krævedes. Disse love, der angik israelitternes pligt over for Gud, over for hinanden og over for de fremmede, var kun de ti buds principper, som var udvidet og forklaret på en sådan måde, at ingen behøvede at tage fejl. De var bestemt til at værne om den hellighed, der var knyttet til de ti bud, der blev skrevet på stentavlerne.