 In the first of the discussion's three phases, the nature of this persistent doubt is explained. The people are convinced that speaking is a corporeal phenomenon, presumably because physical organs are needed both to produce and to apprehend the sounds and a physical medium such as air is needed to carry or convey them. But if that is so, speech without a flesh and blood speaker seems highly unlikely. Yet, the people had also come to believe that God was well above the characteristics and accoutrements of flesh and blood. To remove both the doubt itself and the concomitant supposition that any allegedly divine Law actually had to be the result of human thought and opinion, the people were instructed first to prepare inwardly and outwardly over three days of great terror for the theophany to come. Significantly, however, when Halevi undertakes to describe the momentous revelation, he carefully distinguishes between the events that the people witnessed, on the one hand, and how they reported and transmitted what they apprehended, on the other. What they actually witnessed was (1) lightning, thunder, earthquakes, and fires that surrounded the mountain; (2) Moses entering and emerging from the fire, alive; (3) the presentation of the Ten Commandments; and (4) the stone tablets inscribed with divine writing. The description is uncharacteristically bare of any reference to God having said or done anything and likewise bereft of any biblical citations to fill in the lacunae.