The Wilderness Journey
The journey into the wilderness following the Exodus from Egypt was marked by two important, closely related events: the proclamation of a code of laws that, according to the tradition, Yahweh revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai, and the establishment of a covenant, or contract, between Yahweh and the people of Israel. The basis of the covenant was the body of laws that Yahweh had given and that the people had agreed to obey. Yahweh's part of the contract consisted of his promise to care for the people, supplying for their needs and protecting them against attacks by their enemies.
This covenant relationship between Yahweh and his people, one of the dominant ideas throughout the entire Old Testament, served to distinguish Yahweh from the gods of the surrounding nations. Generally, these other gods were believed to be related to their peoples by the natural ties of physical descent. In other words, they were bound to their people by ties that were not dependent on any contractual agreement or on any type of moral qualification. Consequently, they could not abandon their people because of any moral transgression by the people. But this was not true of Yahweh in his relation to the Hebrew people. His promise to remain as their god was conditional on their living up to the terms of the agreement. Whenever they failed to obey the laws he had given to them, he was no longer bound to protect them or even to claim them as his own people. The prophets of later generations would call attention to this fact and thus remind their contemporaries that security for the nation could not be expected so long as people failed to fulfill the requirements of the covenant to which they had committed themselves.
