To you I will reveal

This an excerpt from the beginning of a yotser sequence, a series of poems written for the blessing “He who creates (yotser) light,” which precedes the recitation of the Shema‘. Written for when the Ten Commandments were read, on Shavuot, this poem recounts the events leading up to the Decalogue and is roughly patterned as a series of dialogues between God and Moses or Moses and the “elders of the people,” with the congregation chiming in for the two alternating refrains. Each stanza contains two or three lines of discussion followed by successive verses from Exodus 19. The poem thus presents a kind of running commentary on the chapter immediately preceding the Ten Commandments. Ohev signs his name in the acrostic of this poem, and each stanza has its own end rhyme ( aaa–bbb).