xxiii. 10-19) are combined with a mass of civil and other legislation;

hence the title "Book of the Covenant" (referred to above, xxiv. 7) has usually been applied to the whole section, xx. 22-xxiii. 33. But this section includes three distinct elements: (a) the "words" ([Hebrew: hadvarim]) found in xx. 24-26, xxii. 29-31, xxiii. 1-10; (b) the "judgments" ([Hebrew: hamishpatim]), xxi. 2-xxii. 17; and (c) a group of moral and ethical enactments, xxii. 18-28, xxiii. 1-9; and an examination of their contents makes it evident that, though the last two groups are unmistakably derived from E, they cannot have formed part of the original "Book of the Covenant"; for the "judgments," which are expressed in a hypothetical form, consist of a number of legal decisions on points of civil law. The cases dealt with fall into five divisions: (1) The rights of slaves, xxi. 2-11; (2) capital offences, xxi. 12-16 (v. 17 has probably been added later); (3) injuries inflicted by man or beast, xxi. 18-32; (4) losses incurred by culpable negligence or theft, xxi. 33-xxii. 6; (5) cases arising out of deposits, loans, seduction, xxii. 7-17. It is obvious, from their very nature, that these legal precedents could not have been included in the covenant which the _people_ (xxiv. 3) promised to observe, and it is now generally admitted that the words "and the judgments" (which are missing in c. 1 b) have been inserted in xxiv. 3a by the redactor to whom the present position of the "judgments" is due.[11] The majority of critics, therefore, adopt Kuenen's conjecture that the "judgments" were originally delivered by Moses on the borders of Moab, and that when D's revised version of Ex. xxi.-xxiii. was combined with JE, the older code was placed alongside of E's other legislation at Horeb. The third group of laws (xxii. 18-28, xxiii. 1-9) appears to have been added somewhat later than the bulk of xxi.-xxiii. Some of the regulations are couched in hypothetical form, but their contents are of a different character to the "judgments," e.g. xxii. 25 f., xxiii. 4 f.; others, again, are of a similar nature, but differ in form, e.g. xxii. 18 f. Lastly, xxii. 20-24, xxiii. 1-3 set forth a number of moral injunctions affecting the individual, which cannot have found place in a civil code. At the same time, these additions must for the most part be prior to D, since many of them are included in Deut. xii.-xxvi., though there are traces of Deuteronomic revision.

Now it is obvious that the results obtained by the foregoing analysis of J and E have an important bearing on the history of the remaining section of E's legislation, viz. the Decalogue (q.v.), Ex. xx. 1-17 (= Deut. v. 6-21). At present the "Ten Words" stand in the forefront of E's collection of laws, and it is evident that they were already found in that position by the author of Deuteronomy, who treated them as the sole basis of the covenant at Horeb. The evidence, however, afforded (a) by the parallel version of Deuteronomy and (b) by the literary analysis of J and E not only fails to support this tradition, but excites the gravest suspicions as to the originality both of the _form_ and of the _position_ in which the Decalogue now appears. For when compared with Ex. xx. 1-17 the parallel version of Deut. v. 6 ff. is found to exhibit a number of variations, and, in particular, assigns an entirely different reason for the observance of the Sabbath. But these variations are practically limited to the explanatory comments attached to the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 10th commandments; and the majority of critics are now agreed that these comments were added at a later date, and that all the commandments, like the 1st and the 6th to the 9th, were originally expressed in the form of a single short sentence. This view is confirmed by the fact that the additions, or comments, bear, for the most part, a close resemblance to the style of D. They can scarcely, however, have been transferred from Deuteronomy to Exodus (or vice versa), owing to the variations between the two versions: we must rather regard them as the work of a Deuteronomic redactor. But the expansion and revision of the Decalogue were not limited to the Deuteronomic school. Literary traces of J and E in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 10th commandments point to earlier activity on the part of R^JE, while the addition of v. 11, which bases the observance of the Sabbath on P 's narrative of the Creation (Gen.