God speaks directly, and what follows is the most quoted passage in the Hebrew Bible. Hebrew never calls it the Ten Commandments — the phrase is aseret ha-devarim, the ten words — and the text does not number them, which is why Jewish, Catholic-Lutheran and Reformed traditions divide the same paragraph three different ways. The list opens the way an ancient treaty opens, with the great king reciting what he has already done for the smaller party before naming a single term. It closes somewhere unexpected: an altar of piled earth or unhewn stone, with a prohibition on steps.