I think it was during Hans Zimmer’s Absurdity that I went into cardiac arrest. Well nearly. He’s always one for the big movie sound, and thought instead of having one bass guitar, he’d have three. The stadium shook. My body shook. My heart was experiencing rhythms it had never felt before. I was wondering how twenty-two thousand ambulances might get jammed in Sydney traffic. But thankfully he backed off just as my heart was one beat from its final flatline.

I wonder if those Israelites who were assembled at Mt Sinai experienced the same phenomenon. God was speaking to them audibly, and his words must have rolled and rumbled and thundered: “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” Such was the intensity and power of the voice, that they begged him to stop; and he did, when he reached the final full-stop of the tenth commandment.

But was it merely the volume that overwhelmed them? Or was it the divine holiness? I wonder if their hearts were like that of Peter at his calling, when he said to Jesus, “Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man”. If their hearts were ‘hearts of flesh’, they might have heard the notes of grace in that preface to the ten commandments. “I have rescued you. Now obey me”. Redemption before rules. That’s always the gracious order of the God who is both holy and kind.