Rabbi Nahum Sarna calls this parasha the “hinge of the Torah” because it contains the revelation of the
Ten Commandments at Sinai (and so to each of us everytime we read it). In popular imagination, the Ten Commandments were given to the Israelites on tablets of stone.
True and not true. The first revelation came to us by “voice”, in words, as is clear in this chapter. And this is critical to understanding the The Commandments themselves:
they are written in stone but can only be understood when we listen.
They, by themselves, are inert. Our human capacity to listen, to learn, to understand and, ultimately, to act, brings them to life and into our lives.