It gives me great pleasure to introduce a little masterpiece of exegesis. Focusing mainly upon a single sentence from the Decalogue (Exod 20:5–6), Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel enables the reader to follow, through all their labyrinthine twists, the thought processes of the biblical authors in their constant rereading and revision of prior traditions. Bernard M. Levinson's hermeneutic decoding is fascinating for its unwillingness simply to highlight the unity of biblical passages, as proponents of synchronic biblical methods are fond of doing, or to identify the breaks and contradictions in these same passages, as advocated by practitioners of the classic diachronic modes of exegesis. Instead, Levinson's method demonstrates that in the Bible the present engages in a ceaseless discussion with the past, which it adapts, corrects, and even contradicts while claiming to transmit it with utmost respect. The exchanges between the present and past are courteous: they follow all the rules of etiquette cherished by the ancients. But behind the formulas of politeness there is often hidden a firm will to reclaim the venerable traditions of the past to bestow their authority upon new formulations required by changing circumstances. In many cases, the discontinuity between the new formulation and the old tradition is obscured by an apparent desire for continuity. Thus, it takes a trained eye to detect, shrouded within the complexity of biblical texts, the subtle play that transforms the recourse to a hallowed past into a powerful means for justifying the innovations of the present.