EXOD319 "The Law" is first cultic (the so-called apodictic laws), and what will become the casuistic are originally the jurisprudence of the community. Through their narrativization, however, they both accede to the category of the prescriptive. And the intertextual relation of the narrative framework with the prescriptive content shores up the covenantal nature of the whole. Thus, for example, the Decalogue's "introduction" is its indispensable characterization: "I am the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt…" Within the consciousness of herself as being in intimate relationship with God, Israel integrates the prescriptive. It is second to a primordial situation that creates the raison d'être and the conditions for the law, namely, the berit. The import of this is immeasurable.