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The story of the Exodus of Moses and the people of Israel has been told many times and in many ways, especially in movies like The Ten Commandments. The Israelites are being led to the Promised Land, but because of their faithlessness, most are banished to forty years in the Sinai Desert.

After Sinai takes a completely different look at an old story. Michael Shelton reviews the major threads in the accounts in the books of Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy and concludes the problem wasn’t the faithlessness of the Jews; it was the overbearing demands of the one who let his people go and then refused to let his people go back. After Sinai is a remarkable essay of a people who sought freedom but instead left one human pharaoh only to find him replaced by a divine pharaoh. The story sounds more in keeping with Mount Olympus. But it’s Mount Sinai and the drama that took place before, during, and after the Ten Commandments. In fact, the Big Ten is not the climax of the story. It’s the events—the interaction among God, Moses, and the people of Israel leading to the banishment to the wilderness—that make for the real climax.