What accounts for the arresting fact that the ḥoq umishpaṭ (‘statute and ordinance’) material, formulated objectively in the third person, is held within a framework of dabar/mitswah (‘word/commandment’), couched as direct second person address? The suggestion may be offered that by the imposition of this framework an original law-code, ḥoq umishpaṭ, is being secondarily subordinated to the form of a covenant-code, dabar/mitswah, and thereby incorporated within ‘covenant at Sinai’. The mishpaṭim,