THE TEN COMMMANDMENTS 

 

 

      This window is centered on the Ten Commandments. This image portrays the stone tablets on which the ten commandments were written in Hebrew in the book of exodus (Exodus 34: 27-35) and reads as follows: Then the Lord said to Moses, "Write down these words, for in accordance with them I have made a covenant with you and with Israel." So Moses stayed there (Mount Sinai) with the Lord for forty days and forty nights, without eating any food or drinking any water, and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments. As Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands, he did not know that the skin of his face had become radiant while he conversed with the Lord.   The ten commandments were the covenant obligations to a way of life that God had enjoined on the Israelites through Moses, with the promise on His part to make the Israelites his special-chosen people among all the people of the earth.   Surrounding the Ten Commandments is a ribbon like circle of fire that represents God's burning/divine love that led him to reveal himself to us through Moses and the Hebrew people in order that we may come to know Him and how to live in His Love as His children.

   

     Above the Ten Commandments are the words of the great shema to Israel in the book of Deuteronomy 6, 4-5 that enjoins the Hebrew people to love Him with their whole heart and their whole soul and their whole strength. Just below these words are the Hebrew letters that form the Holy Name of God -YHWH. Below the Ten Commandments is an image of a scroll of the Torah or the book of the law (the first five books of the Hebrew bible).