From heaven he spoke to you in order to teach you, and on earth he showed you his great fire from which you also heard his words.

For the Lord your God is a consuming fire; he is a jealous God.

The Lord spoke face to face with you at the mountain, from the middle of the fire.

Have a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the middle of fire, as you yourselves have, and lived to tell about it?

There must never be found among you anyone who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, anyone who practices divination, an omen reader, a soothsayer, a sorcerer,

the one who was constantly going before you to find places for you to set up camp. He appeared by fire at night and cloud by day, to show you the way you ought to go.

You approached and stood at the foot of the mountain, a mountain ablaze to the sky above it and yet dark with a thick cloud.

Then the Lord spoke to you from the middle of the fire; you heard speech but you could not see anything – only a voice was heard.

Be very careful, then, because you saw no form at the time the Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the middle of the fire.

Then, when you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness while the mountain was ablaze, all your tribal leaders and elders approached me.

But now, why should we die, because this intense fire will consume us! If we keep hearing the voice of the Lord our God we will die!

Who is there from the entire human race who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the middle of the fire as we have, and has lived?

Instead, this is what you must do to them: You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, cut down their sacred Asherah poles, and burn up their idols.

So I turned and went down the mountain while it was blazing with fire; the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands.

You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, burn up their sacred Asherah poles, and cut down the images of their gods; you must eliminate their very memory from that place.

For a fire has been kindled by my anger, and it burns to lowest Sheol; it consumes the earth and its produce, and ignites the foundations of the mountains.

(I was standing between the Lord and you at that time to reveal to you the message of the Lord, because you were afraid of the fire and would not go up the mountain.) He said:

The Lord said these things to your entire assembly at the mountain from the middle of the fire, the cloud, and the darkness with a loud voice, and that was all he said. Then he inscribed the words on two stone tablets and gave them to me.

You said, “The Lord our God has shown us his great glory and we have heard him speak from the middle of the fire. It is now clear to us that God can speak to human beings and they can keep on living.

You must burn the images of their gods, but do not covet the silver and gold that covers them so much that you take it for yourself and thus become ensnared by it; for it is abhorrent to the Lord your God.