Exodus 24:4 Moses wrote all the words of Yahweh, and rose up early in the morning, and built an altar under the mountain, and twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel.
One way of doing Bible reading is to take a verse, sometimes just a few phrases, and read each word. Stop and process what that word means, especially in the context it is being used. Take time to put it all together and let it sink in. You can do this without any special dictionary or tools. Just rely on your own knowledge of what a word means. If a word really stumps you, a handy dictionary or thesaurus might be good to have. With that said, let’s examine God’s message in the few words that are just in the opening phrase of this verse. The rest of the verse is important too, that’s why I included it, but more about that later.
Moses. The most prominent of prophets. His name means ‘pulled from the water’. He was rescued from his own dangers, as opposed to Jesus who was God in the flesh, which means ‘yah saves’. Moses was delivered to be the deliverer of his people. Jesus came to save, with the salvation from Yah (God).
Wrote. From a word that literally means to engrave, but why do we write things? To store ideas in a memory device so we don’t forget. When sharing with others writing it once and passing it to many ensures that gossip, or variations in mispronounced, or misheard words get communicated with accuracy.
All. Each and every, the entire, whole, or complete thing. God didn’t tell Moses everything, but of the things he did speak to Moses, he wrote it down.
Words. The way we express internal thoughts in a physical way. The physical sound that comes out doesn’t mean anything unless you know the language it is spoken in. It takes on deeper meaning when we come to know alternate uses, emotional baggage and symbolism, and so on. Written words are the same. Marks on paper, or arrangements of colored pixels on a computer screen, they don’t mean anything until you associate the thoughts and emotional meaning we assign to them. Do you know what this is: ‘DBRY’? You will once I tell you. It’s the Hebrew word, transliterated into ASCII text, so it can be displayed in English, for the word, ‘words’.
So, thus far we have somebody doing something. Moses wrote. What did he write? Words. Not some words, but all the words. The entire amount of words. That’s a lot of words. Words about what? Actually not about what, but from who.
God. Actually Yahweh. The eternal, living and breathing one.
Whew, let that digest for a moment. God, a being that exists on a higher dimension than us bothered to communicate to Moses. Moses then wrote down all the words that were spoken to him. Well, however God relayed the message, this verse doesn’t say. From other areas of the scripture we know he did speak at various times and in various ways.
Those words were written down. The message was so important that Moses didn’t want to forget any bit of it. It was written down so it could reach many people, and they could read the very same message, exactly. It was written so it would last beyond the life span of Moses for future generations to read that exact same message.
Epilog. What did Moses do when he wrote down these words from God? What reaction do you have when God delivers a message into your ears? Get mad? Reject it? Deny it and think that surely this is just crazy talk. Keep it a secret. Say to yourself that this is nice, but surely a message that someone else can use, not me. Do you get your toes stepped on? Do you think that these are just some old dusty words, from an old dusty time, and they just don’t relate. Stop making excuses.
God layed it on Moses. Moses took time to write every word, then he went out and worshiped. He got up at dawn, that is what morning refers to most often when you see it in the Bible, he set up a memorial and worshipped. He had those special words to take with him, and he marked this as a special place to remember.
When God speaks to us, we should respond in a manner of respect and worship. Then we can take those words and apply that message where it is intended.