BOOK, scroll — from a root meaning to count or recount. Its first use naming a portion of the Torah itself is here: Moses writes and reads aloud the 'sefer ha-brit,' the BOOK OF THE COVENANT (24:4, 7), before a single stone tablet has even been carved. The same word will later name the whole Torah as a single scroll (Deuteronomy 31:26) and, further on still, the prophetic scroll Ezekiel is made to eat (Ezekiel 2:9) — both not yet on these pages. From this verse forward, a written record is something the text can point to, read aloud, and hand over. → first discussed at Exod 24:7