The Arrival at Sinai and the First Message

v. 1. In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. The greater part of the time since the departure out of Egypt, on the fifteenth day of the first month, had apparently been spent at Elim and at Rephidim, and it was not until the third month that the great army came into the desert of Sinai proper.

v. 2. For they were departed from Rephidim, Exo 17:1, and were come to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the mount, over against the mountain from which the entire range has received its name.

v. 3. And Moses went up unto God, he was on his way to the summit. And the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel. In poetic form the Lord prepares for the statement of the covenant which He here intended to make with the entire people through the person of Moses.

v. 4. Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, in punishing them with such terrible plagues, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, which are an image of the strong and affectionate care of God, for the eagle protects and fosters her young with great devotion, and brought you unto myself. The mountain on which the pillar of cloud now rested was to be considered the habitation of the Lord for the time being, the place where He intended to reveal Himself in the covenant which He was about to make with the people.

v. 5. Now, therefore, if ye will obey my voice in deed and keep my covenant, gladly enter into the relation of mercy which the Lord intended to propose, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, a possession to be cherished and guarded most carefully, more than any other nation in the world; for all the earth is Mine, and the sovereign Lord of the universe, who is not a national god, has the right to manifest Himself to a single nation with unusual mercy.

v. 6. And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, kings, in order to conquer the heathen, and priests, in order to serve the living God, and an holy nation, a nation consecrated, set apart, for the service of Jehovah, and therefore under obligation to lead a life of sanctification before Him. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel. That was the solemn, welcoming message which the Lord sent to the people whom He had chosen. In this respect the children of Israel were a type of the New Testament Church, the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the peculiar nation, 1Pe 2:9; for Christ has made us kings and priests unto God and His Father, Rev 1:6. As such we should show forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

v. 7. And Moses came and called for the elders of the people, he summoned or invited them, and laid before their faces all these words which the Lord commanded him.

v. 8. And all the people without exception answered together, through their elders, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do. They solemnly vowed allegiance and obedience, they took the obligation upon themselves. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord.

v. 9. And the Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, whose darkness would, in a measure, conceal His glory, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for ever. The position of Moses as the receiver and the mediator of the divine revelation would thus be attested, and the revelation and the authority of the Law, as given by him, would be established. The fact that he teaches the Word of the Lord gives to every true preacher his authority to this day. And Moses told the words of the people unto the Lord.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

ISRAEL AT SINAI,PREPARATIONS FOR THE GIVING OF THE LAND.

EXPOSITION

THE JOURNEY TO MOUNT SINAI. From Rephidim in the Wady Feiran, where they had discomfited Amalek (Exo 17:8-13), the Israelites moved towards Sinai, probably by the two passes known as Wady Solar and Wady-esh-Sheikh, which gradually converge and meet at the entrance to the plain of Er-Rahah. This plain is generally allowed to be “the Desert of Sinai.” It is “two miles long, and half-a-mile broad”, nearly flat, and dotted with tamarisk bushes. The mountains which enclose it have for the most part sloping sides, and form a sort of natural amphitheatre. The plain abuts at its south-eastern extremity on abrupt cliffs of granite rock rising from it nearly perpendicularly, and known as the Ras Sufsafeh. “That such a plain should exist at all in front of such a cliff is,” as Dean Stanley well remarks, “so remarkable a coincidence with the sacred narrative, as to furnish a strong internal argument, not merely of its identity with the scene, but of the scene itself having been described by an eye-witness”. All the surroundings are such as exactly suit the narrative. “The awful and lengthened approach, as to some natural sanctuary, would have been the fittest preparation for the coming scene. The low line of alluvial mounds at the foot of the cliff exactly answers to the ‘bounds’ which were to keep the people off front ‘touching the mount.’ The plain itself is not broken and uneven and narrowly shut in, like almost all others in the range, but presents a long retiring sweep, against which the people could ‘remove and stand afar off’ The cliff, rising like a huge altar, in front of the whole congregation, and visible against the sky in lonely grandeur from end to end of the whole plain, is the very image of the mount that might be touched, and from which the voice of God might be heard far and wide over the plain below, widened at that point to its utmost extent by the confluence of all the contiguous valleys. Here, beyond all other parts of the peninsula, is the adytum, withdrawn as if in the end ‘of the world,’ from all the stir and confusion of earthly things”. As an eminent engineer has observed”No spot in the world can be pointed out which combines in a more remarkable manner the conditions of a commanding height and of a plain in every part of which the sights and sounds described in Exodus would reach an assembled multitude of more than two million souls.” Here then, we may well say, in the words used by the most recent of scientific explorers, “was the scene of the giving of the law. From Ras Sufsafeh the law was proclaimed to the children of Israel, assembled in the plains of Er Rahah”.

Exo 19:1

In the third month. The month Sivan, corresponding nearly with our June. When the children of Israel were gone forth. Rather, “after the children of Israel had gone forth,” or “after the departure of the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.” Compare Exo 16:1, where the expression used is the same. The same day. Literally, “on that day”which can only mean “on the day that the month began”on the 1st of Sivan. The wilderness of Sinai. The plain Er-Rahah; as is now generally allowed, since the true character of the Wady Sebaiyeh has been shown by Dean Stanley and others.

Exo 19:2

They were departed from Rephidim. See the comment on Exo 17:1, and compare Num 33:15. There Israel en-camped before the mountain. The bulk of the tents were no doubt pitched in the plain, Er-Rahah; but this may not have sufficed, and some may have been located in the Wady-ed-Deir, north-east of the Ras Sufsafeh, and others in the Seil-Leja to the west. The Ras Sufsafeh is visible from both these valleys.

HOMILETICS

Exo 19:1-2

Localities shaped to suit God’s moral purposes.

It is scarcely possible to read the descriptions of the Sinaitic localities by modern travellers, who pointedly note their exact adaptation to the scenes transacted among them, without the feeling stealing upon us, that God, in the countless ages during which he was shaping and ordering the earth to be a fitting habitation for man was also arranging it in such sort as would best conduce to the exhibition upon it of those supernatural occurrences, which in his counsels were to constitute turning-points in the moral history of man. Take for instance Jerusalem: are we to suppose that the valleys were furrowed and the rocky platform upraised by the elements acting mechanically, as chance might direct, or not rather that God lovingly shaped, age after age, the mountain where he was about to set his name, and which was to be “the joy of the whole earth”? (Psa 48:2.) Rome again, with its seven hills: was not this remarkable formation brought into existence to constitute the site for that capital which was to be, first and last, the pivot of the world’s secular history; for five hundred years the seat of an almost universal empire; for a thousand the western ecclesiastical centre; and having in the future possibilities which the wisest forecast can only dimly indicate, but which transcend those of any other existing city. And, if in these cases Providence contrived and shaped the geographic features with a view to the future history, must it not have been the same at Sinai? Must not that vast granite cluster have been upreared in the place it holds by a series of throes which shook all the regions of the east, in order that from it the law might be given in such a way as to impress men deeply? Must not the plain Er-Rahah have been washed by floods into its present level surface to furnish a convenient place from which the multitudinous host of Israel might at once see and hear? Must not the entire Sinaitic region have been so modelled, that here should be the adytumhere and here alone in the entire district, should be the natural “inmost sanctuary”penetrale“holy of holies”the centre of attractionthe fit spot for supernatural events, on which the future of mankind was to hinge for fourteen centuries? To us it seems, that God did not so much select for his supernatural communications with man the fittest of existing localities, as design the localities themselves with a view to the communications, shaping them to suit his moral purposes.

HOMILIES BY J. ORR

Exo 19:1, Exo 19:2

Arrival and encampment at Sinai.

We come now to the consideration of what, next to the exodus, is the greatest event in Israel’s historythe ratification at Sinai of the nation’s covenant with God, preceded by the giving of the law. We cannot attach too great importance to these Divine acts. The covenant at Sinai placed Israel in a totally unique relation to Jehovah. It conferred on that people an honour the like of which no nation on earth ever had, or ever has since, enjoyed. It gave rise to an economy, the express design of which was to prepare the way for Christto shut men up under a conviction of the hopelessness of attaining righteousness by the law, to the faith that should afterwards be revealed (Gal 3:23). This covenant, as befitted the majesty of God, dealing with a sinful people, was to be ordained “in the hand of a mediator” (Gal 3:19). Moses, accordingly, is seen in these verses entering on his mediatorial functions. Once, a second, and a third time, in the course of this single chapter, he is seen ascending the mount, to meet with God (Exo 19:3, Exo 19:8, Exo 19:20); and once, a second, and a third time, he is sent back from its awful recesses with a message to the people. Exo 19:1, Exo 19:2 relate the arrival at Sinai.

I. THE NOTE OF TIME.”In the third month,” etc. (Exo 19:1). That is, about six weeksforty or fifty daysafter leaving Egypt. This was close on the date of Pentecost, afterwards traditionally observed as the anniversary of the giving of the law. It was probably with allusion to this fact that, in the new economy, the day of Pentecost was chosen for the gift of the Spirit to the Church (Act 2:1-47.). Thus was fulfilled the prophecy”Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts” (Jer 31:31-33). “Sinai, then, was the Pentecost of the old dispensation. And, conversely, Pentecost is the Sinai of the new.” (Gibson.)

II. THE PLACE OF ENCAMPMENT.”The wilderness of Sinai before the mount” (Exo 19:1, Exo 19:2). A fitter theatre for the awful revelation about to be given could scarcely be imagined. The heart of the desert, it was

1. A place of absolute solitude. The people were absolutely alone with Godwithdrawn from everything which could distract their thoughts from him and from his message. Owen observes”When God deals with men by the law, he will let them see nothing but himself and their own consciences For the most part, when the law is preached to sinners, they have innumerable diversions and reliefs at hand to shield them from its terror and efficacy. They have other things to do than to attend to the voice of the law; at least, it is not yet necessary that they should so do. But when God will bring them to the mount, as he will here or hereafter, all these pretexts will vanish and disappear” (on Heb 12:18). For the thorough awakening of conscience, we must get a man alonemust, in some way or other, sever him from his ordinary surroundings.

2. A place of great sublimity. Travellers dwell with awe on its bare, desolate grandeuron “the lengthened approach” to the mount, “as to some natural sanctuary.” The mind, amidst such grandeur, is irresistibly drawn upwards. It is brought into the condition most fit for the reception of thoughts of the everlasting and sublime. How suitable was such a place for the promulgation of that moral law which Kant said affected him with such indescribable awe every time he thought of it! Every circumstance was present which could lend body, vastness, volume, impressiveness, and reduplicated sublimity to the terrors of the revelation. The “sound of the trumpet and the voice of words” would reverberate with strange power amid those rocky heights, and along the echoing valleys. The sternness of the environment was itself a commentary on the law’s sanctities.

3. A place of barrenness. “It was a barren and fruitless desert, where there was little water or food, and, answerably thereunto, the law in a state of sin, would bring forth no fruit, nothing acceptable to God, nor useful to the souls of men.” (Owen.) So entirely has the spirit of this sceneof this awful desert solitudepassed into the revelation connected with it, that the two can no longer be dissociated. Sinai, unconsciously to ourselves, acts upon us to this hour, in every contact of our minds with the truths of the law.

III. THE DESIGN OF THE STAY. Israel abode at Sinai for eleven months. During this period the nation enjoyed a season of rest, received the law, ratified its covenant with God, constructed a sanctuary, and was otherwise equipped and organised. It was a time of repose, of retired communion with God, of receptivity. Such times are very needful in the spiritual life.

1. Needful for all. The Christian toiler needs seasons of rest (Mar 6:31). His truest rest will be found in communion with God and study of his will. By-and-by the call will come, summoning him to renewed activity”Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount,” etc. (Deu 1:6).

2. Specially needful in the stage of spiritual history immediately succeeding conversion. Young converts will do well to ponder the example of Paul, who, after God had revealed his Son in him, and before entering on his work as an apostle, “went into Arabia,” perhaps revisiting this very spot (Gal 1:17). They are all the better for some such season of solitary communion with God as is represented by Israel’s stay at Sinai. They need repose of mind. Like the Israelites, they have a covenant to ratify with God. Like the Israelites, they stand greatly in need of instruction. They need time for lengthened study of the Divine will. They need equipment and preparation for the trials they are afterwards to encounter. Their coming, it is true, is rather figured as a coming to Mount Sion, than as a coming to Mount Sinai (Heb 12:22); but none the less has Sinai important lessons which it will be for their interest not to overlook. The Christian who does not frequently in spirit visit Sinai will not readily understand his privileges at Sion. The following words of Dr. Candlish express important truth:”Individually, by a separate process in each mind, a distinct spiritual change in every soul, God effects the rescue of his people. There cannot, therefore, be any general gathering together, in a literal sense, such as there was at Sinai. But practically, in a real though spiritual sense, every converted soul has to pass through an analogous spiritual crisis. It is a momentous crisis, as regards both the exodus and the pilgrimage; the escape he has made and the way he has to go. It is, in fact, the settlement, once for all, of the terms upon which he is henceforth to be with his God as his Sovereign Lord. It is his being confronted and brought face to face with God, in a new state and character, as redeemed by his grace, and ready for his work.” (“Fatherhood of God.”)J.O.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

Exo 19:1. In the third monththe same day Houbigant shews clearly, that this means the first day of the month; for the Jews, says he, celebrate the pentecost fifty days after the passover. From the departure out of Egypt to the coming to Sinai, were forty-five days, for they came out the fifteenth day of the first month; from which day, to the first day of the third month, forty-five days are numbered. On the second day of this third month, Moses ascended into the mountain, when three days were given to the people to purify themselves: you have, therefore, the fourth day of the third month, or the forty-ninth day from the departure out of Egypt. On the next day, which was the fiftieth, after the celebration of the passover, the glory of God appeared in the Mount; commemorative of which miracle, the Jews celebrate the feast of Pentecost. The verse might more properly be read, the children of Israel, in the third month after they had left the land of Egypt, on the first day of the month, came into the wilderness of Sinai. Bishop Kidder very judiciously observes, that this was a fit time and place for them to receive their law. They had, a little before, received many proofs of the power of God, and of his care of them, which might dispose them to obedience to his law. They were in a wilderness, in a place of recess and leisure: they were freed from the slavery of Egypt, and from the idolatrous examples of the Egyptians. On the other hand, they were short of Canaan, and so not diverted by wars with that people, nor acquainted with their abominations, nor rendered dull and stupid by the plenty and prosperities of that land. On all which accounts this was a most fit season for the solemnity.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

SECOND DIVISION: MOSES AND SINAI.

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FOUNDATION IN THE LARGER SENSE

Exodus 19-31

FIRST SECTION
The Arrival at Sinai and the Preparation for the Giving of the Law. The Covenant People and Covenant Kingdom. Institution of the Covenant

Exo 19:1-25

1In the third month when [after] the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. 2For they were departed [And they journeyed] from Rephidim, and were come [and came] to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched [and encamped] in the wilderness, and there Israel camped [was encamped] before the mount. 3And Moses went up unto God, and Jehovah called unto him out of [from] the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: 4Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles wings, and brought you unto myself. 5Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people [peoples]: for all the earth is mine: 6And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an [a] holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel. 7And Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before their faces 8[before them] all these words which Jehovah commanded him. And all the people answered together, and said, All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do. And Moses 9returned [brought back] the words of the people unto Jehovah. And Jehovah said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee and believe [trust] thee for ever. And Moses told the 10words of the people unto Jehovah. And Jehovah said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them to-day and to-morrow, and let them wash their clothes, 11And be ready against the third day: for [for on] the third day Jehovah will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai. 12And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up [Beware of going up] into the mount, or touch [touching] the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely [surely be] put to death. 13There shall not an [no] hand touch it [him],1 but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it [he] shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount. 14And Moses went down from the mount unto the people, and sanctified the people; and they washed their clothes. 15And he said unto the people, Be ready against the third day: come not at your wives [near a woman]. 16And it came to pass on the third day, in the morning [when morning came], that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the [a] trumpet exceeding loud; so that [and] all the people that was17[were] in the camp trembled. And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with [to meet] God; and they stood at the nether part [the foot] of the mount. 18And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke [all mount Sinai smoked], because Jehovah descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. 19And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder [And the voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder], Moses spake [speaking] and God answered [answering] 20him by a voice.2 And Jehovah came down upon mount Sinai, on [to] the top of the mount; and Jehovah called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went 21up. And Jehovah said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto Jehovah to gaze [behold], and many of them perish. 22And let the priests also, which [who] come near to Jehovah, sanctify themselves, lest Jehovah break forth upon them. 23And Moses said unto Jehovah, The people cannot come up to mount Sinai: for thou chargedst [hast charged] us, saying, Set bounds about 24the mount, and sanctify it. And Jehovah said unto him, A way [Go], get thee down; and thou shalt come up, thou, and Aaron with thee: but let not the priests and the people break through to come up unto Jehovah, lest he break forth upon them. 25So Moses went down unto the people, and spake unto [told] them.

TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL

[Exo 19:13. The repetition of the word touch () naturally suggests the thought that the object is the same as in the preceding verse, viz., mount. But this cannot be the case. For (1) if this were so, it is not probable that the word hand would be used, especially after the more general prohibition. The second prohibition would be weaker than the first, for one would most naturally touch the mountain with the foot, not the hand. But (2) more decisive still is the consideration that the conjunction does not admit of this construction. It can here only have the meaning but in the sense of the German sondern, i.e, but on the contrary. As the verse stands in A. V., a reader would most naturally understand but to be equivalent to but that, and the meaning to be, No hand shall touch it wilhout his being stoned, etc., which, however, cannot have been the meaning of the translators, and certainly not of the Hebrew author. On the other hand, it makes no sense to say, No hand shall touch the mountain, but on the contrary he shell be stoned. The meaning must be: No hand shall touch him, i.e., the offender; but he shall be killed without such contact by being stoned or shot.Tr.]

[The last two verbs in this verse are in the Imperfect tense, and hence express continued action. The Hebrew does not say, when the voice. waxed louder and londer, [then] Moses spake, etc., especially not, if when is understood to be equivalent to atter. We have endeavored to give the true sense by the participial rendering.Tr.]

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. Sinai and the Arrival there.

A full geographical treatise on the whole Horeb group, and especially Sinai, is given by Ritter VIII. 2, p. 527 sqq.; Robinson, 1., p. 140 sqq.; Tischendorf, Aus dem heiligen Lande, p. 61 sqq.; Strauss, p. 133 sqq. See also the lexicons and commentaries. We quote from Zellers Biblisches Wrterbuch, II., p. Exodus 482: A few remarks on the question respecting the scene of the giving of the law. There are two different localities which have their advocates. Some find the place in Sinai proper, Jebel Musa and the plain es-Sebaiyeh lying south of it; others, in the northern terrace of Sinai, that which is now called Horeb, especially the peak of Ras es-Safsafeh, with the plain er-Rahah, which stretches out before it in the north. Both plains would be in themselves suitable for the purpose; for they are about equally large, and furnish room for the marshalling of a large multitude. Each is so sharply distinguished from the mountain rising up from it that the latter might in the most literal sense be said to be touched by one in the plain;which gives an excellent illustration of the expression used by Moses (Exo 19:12): whosoever toucheth the mount, etc. Yet perhaps the weight of the evidence is in favor of the southern plain, es-Sebaiyeh. For (1) the mountains within which the plain reposes, like a secluded asylum, rise up from it in an amphitheatrical form and very gradually, and therefore its slopes could have been used for the marshalling of the people if at any time there was not quite space enough in the plain itself; whereas the mountains bordering on the plain er-Rahah are so abrupt and steep that they could not have been used for this purpose. (2) The plain er-Rahah has a water-shed from which the ground to the north falls away more and more, so that to the view of those standing there, Ras es-Safsafeh must have become less and less prominent, whereas the plain es-Sebaiyeh rises higher and higher towards the south, and Jebel Musa or Sinai becomes more and more majestic in appearance. (3) The view on the south side of Sinai, where this mountain towers up perpendicularly nearly 2000 feet, like an immense altar, is decidedly more grand. (4) In Exo 19:17 it is said that Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. Now we can hardly conceive a place better fitted for a camping-place than the plain er-Rahah with the valleys and pastures of the environs, especially the wady es-Sheikh closely adjoining it. But if this was the camping place, and at the same time the place where the people were drawn up at the time of the giving of the law, how are we to conceive of that bringing forth out of the camp? This expression would have no meaning. Whereas this expression becomes full of appositeness, if we assume the plain er-Rahah on the north of Horeb to be the camping-place, but the plain es-Sebaiyeh south of Jebel Musa to be the standing-place of the people when the law was given. From that northern plain 600,000 men (for children and minors, as well as women and old men doubtless remained behind in the camp) might well have gone in the course of a day through the short wadies es-Sebaiyeh and Shoeib into the southern plain, and back again into the camp; for the distance is only a short hours journey.On the difficulties attending the combination of both places, see Keil, II., p. 94. The expression, Israel camped before the mount (Exo 19:2), is certainly opposed to the assumption of two camps over against two mountains. Comp. the graphic description in Strauss. On the relation between the names Sinai and Horeb, comp. Knobel, p. 188. Note: (1) that the whole region is named, after the mountain where the law was given, sometimes Sinai, sometimes Horeb; (2) that Horeb, being reached while the people were in Rephidim, may include Sinai; (3) that Horeb, as a separate mountain, lies to the north of Sinai, and therefore was first reached by the Israelites. See also Keil, p. 90, and Philippson, p. 403.This group of lofty granite mountains cannot primarily be designed to serve as a terror to sinners; it rather represents the majesty and immovable fixedness of Gods moral revelation, of His law, in a physical form; it is therefore a positive, imposing fact, which disseminates no life, yet on which the sinners false life may be dashed to destruction.Lepsius hypothesis, that Sinai or Horeb is to be looked for in Mt. Serbal, has rightly met no approval. In opposition to it consult Dieterici, Reisebilder, II., p. 53 sqq.; Ritter, Erdkunde, XIV., p. 738 sqq.; and Kurtz, History, etc., III., p. 93 (Keil).

The Arrival at Sinai.In the third month. Two months then have passed thus far, of which probably the greater part belongs to the encampment in Elim and Rephidim. The same day.According to the Jewish tradition this means on the first day of the third month, but grammatically it may be taken more indefinitely = at this time.

2. Jehovahs Proposal of a Covenant, and the Assent of the People. Exo 19:3-8.

And Moses went up.On Sinai Moses received his commission from Jehovah to lead out the people. Therefore he must now again appear before Jehovah on Sinai, to complete his first mission, and receive Jehovahs further commands. It is a characteristic feature of the following transaction concerning the covenant, that Jehovah calls out to Moses as he goes up. A covenant is a coming together of two parties. It has been said indeed, that , , testamentum, means, not covenant, but institution. It is true, the divine institution is the starting-point and foundation, but the product of this institution is the covenant. This is true of all the covenants throughout the Bible. They everywhere presuppose personal relations, reciprocity, freedom; i.e., free self-determination.

So here the people are induced by Jehovahs proposal to declare their voluntary adoption of the covenant (Exo 19:8). After this general adoption of the covenant, there follows a special adoption of the covenant law, Exo 24:3. Not till after this does the solemn covenant transaction take place, in which the people again avow their assent, their free subjection to the law of Jehovah (Exo 24:7). This relation is so far from being an absolute enslavement of the human individuality by the majesty of the divine personality, as Hegel imagines (Vol. xi. 2, 46), that on the basis of this relation the notion of a bridal and conjugal relation between Jehovah and His people gradually comes to view. But the characteristic feature of the law is, that it rests, in general, on a germ of ideality, of knowledge, of redemption, but, in particular, everywhere requires an unconditional, and even blind, obedience. Hence it may be said: In general it is doctrine (Thorah), in particular it is statute. The ideal and empirical basis is the typical redemption: I am Jehovah, thy God, that have brought thee out of Egypt, etc., as a fact of divine goodness and grace; and the spirit of it is expressed in the rhythmically solemn form in which the covenant is proclaimed in Exo 19:3-6. The parallel phrases, House of Jacob, and Children of Israel, present in conjunction the natural descent of the people, and the spiritual blessings allotted to them. Ye have seen.A certain degree of religious experience is essential in order to be able to enter into covenant relations with Jehovah. This experience is specifically an experience of the sway of His justice over His enemies, and of His grace over His chosen people. Eagles wings.The eagles wings are an image of the strong and affectionate care of God; for the eagle cherishes and fosters her young very carefully; she flies under them, when she takes them out of the nest, in order that they may not fall down upon rocks and injure themselves or perish. Comp. Deu 32:11, and illustrations from profane writers, in Bochart, Hieroz. II., pp. 762, 765 sqq. (Keil).And brought you unto myself.Knobel: to the dwelling-place on Sinai. Keil: unto my protection and care. It probably means: to the revelation of myself in the form of law, symbolized indeed by the sanctuary of the lawgiver, viz., Sinai. But that is a very outward conception of Keils, that the pillar of cloud probably retired to mount Sinai. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed.According to Keil the promise precedes the requirement, for Gods grace always anticipates mans action; it demands nothing before it has given. But here evidently the requirement precedes the promise; and this is appropriate to the legal religion of Moses in the narrower sense. In the patriarchal religion of Abraham the promise precedes the requirement; under Moses the requirement precedes the promise, but not till after the fulfilment of a former patriarchal promise, an act of redemption, had preceded the requirement. The requirement is very definite and decided, accordant with the law.The promise is, first: Ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me.Keil says: signifies not possession in general, but a precious possession, which one saves, lays up (), hence treasure of gold and silver, 1Ch 29:3, etc. ( , etc.Mal 3:17; Tit 2:14; 1Pe 2:9). We translate, above all people, not, out of all people, in accordance with the following words: for all the earth is mine.This reason for choosing Israel at once guards against the exclusiveness which would regard Jehovah as merely a national God (Keil). It may be observed that the people are to be as distinctively the lot () of Jehovah, as Jehovah desires to be the lot of His people.In the second place, the first promise, or the , is explained: Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests.The LXX. translate, ; so Peter, 1Pe 2:9. Onkelos: kings, priests. Jonathan: crowned kings, ministering priests. According to the Hebrew text, the kingdom as a unit, or the realm as a body of citizens, is a nation of priests. The individuals are priests; the unity of their commonwealth is a kingdom, whose king is Jehovah. It is therefore a kingdom whose royal authority operates every way to liberate and ennoble, to sanctify and dignify; the priests are related to the king; in their totality under the king they constitute the priesthood, but only under the condition that they offer sacrifice as priests. The N. T. term, a royal priesthood, derived from the LXX., merges the several priests in the higher unity of a single priesthood, whose attribute, royal, expresses the truth that the king, through his royal spirit, has incorporated himself into the midst of his people. All this, now, the Israelites are to be, in their general attitude, first in the typical sense, which points forward to the actual fulfilment, and prophetically includes it. Keil, therefore, is wrong in saying that the notion of theocracy or divine rule (referring to the preceding explanations, II., p. 97), as founded by the establishment of the Sinaitic covenant, does not at all lie in the phrase [kingdom of priests]. The theocracy established by the formation of the covenant (chap. 24) is only the means by which Jehovah designs to make His chosen people a kingdom of priests. Whilst here the theocracy is made not even a type, but only the medium of a type, of the New Testament kingdom of heaven, the people of Israel are raised high above their typical significance (p. 98), much as is done in the Judaizing theories of Hofmann and others. The relations are rather quite homogeneous: a typical people, a typical kingdom of God, a typical law, a typical sacrifice, etc. On the other hand, Keils sentiment, that Israel, as a nation of priests, has a part to act in behalf of other people, is every way accordant with the Old Testament prophecy and with the New Testament. (Isaiah 42; Rom 11:15; Rom 15:16.) And a holy nation.The notion of the holiness of Jehovah first appears in chap. 15. Here the notion of a holy people. The holiness of Jehovah is the originating cause of the creation of a holy people. On the various explanations of the notion of holiness, vid. Keil, p. 99. Neither the notion of newness or brilliancy, nor that of purity or clearness satisfies the concrete import of holiness. Jehovah keeps Himself pure in His personality, He protects His glory by His purity, His universality by His particularitythus is He the Holy One. And so He creates for Himself a holy people that in a peculiar sense exist for Him, separated from the ungodly world, as He in a peculiar sense exists for them, and keeps Himself aloof from notions and forms of worship that conflict with true views of His personality. The opposite of is , , profanus (Keil). See the passages 1Pe 1:15; comp. Lev 11:44; Lev 19:2.And all the people answered together. Thus a historical, positive, conscious obligation is entered into, resting, it is true, on an obligation inherent in the nature of things.

3. Provisions for the Negotiation of the Covenant. Exo 19:9-13.

First: Jehovah will reveal Himself to Moses in the thick cloud. The people are to listen while He talks with Moses. Keil seems to assume that the people also are to hear with their own ears the words of the fundamental law. But Exo 19:16-19 show what is meant by the peoples hearing. The sound of thunder and of the trumpet which the people hear sanctions the words which Moses hears. In consequence of this the people are to believe him for ever. The perpetual belief in Moses is the perpetual belief in the revelation and authority of the law. What follows shows that mediately the people did hear the words.

Secondly: The people, in order to receive the law, are to be sanctified for three days, i.e., are to dispose themselves to give exclusive attention to it. The symbolical expression for this consists in their washing their garments, ceremonially purifying them. It shows a want of appreciation of propriety to include, as Keil does, the explanatory precept of Exo 19:15 among the immediate requirements of Jehovah.

Thirdly: The people are to be kept back by a fence enclosing the mountain. That is, the restraining of the people from profaning the mountain as the throne of legislation serves to protect them; comp. the significance of the parables in Matthew 13. The transgressor is exposed to capital punishment; but inasmuch as his transgression finds him on the other side of the limit, no one could seize him without himself becoming guilty of the transgression; hence the direction that he should be killed from a distance with stones or darts.3 Consistency requires that the same should be done with beasts that break through. Reverence for the law is thus to be cultivated by the most terrifying and rigorous means. When the trumpet. = ,. To draw out the horn [as the Hebrew expresses it] is the same as to blow the horn in prolonged notes (Keil). Vid. Winer, Realwrterbuch, Art. Musikalische Instrumente. It is a question when the prohibition to come near the mountain was to be terminated. According to Keil, a signal was to be given summoning the people to approach, and that then the people, as represented by the elders, were to ascend the mountain. But nothing is anywhere said of such a signal. It is simpler, with Knobel, thus to understand the direction: When at the close of the divine appearances and communications an alarm is sounded, and so the people are summoned to start, to separate.4 When the tabernacle was finished, this became the sacred meeting-place of the people, to which they were called. Soon afterwards the trumpets summoned them to set forth, perhaps re-enforced, on account of the importance of the occasion, by the jubilee horn, or itself identified with it.

4. The Preparation of the People. Exo 19:14-15.

The direction given by Jehovah respecting the sanctification of the people is further explained by Moses. The distinction between the divine revelation and the human expansion of it appears here as in 1 Corinthians 7.

5. The Signs accompanying the Appearance of Jehovah, the Lawgiver, on Sinai. Exo 19:16-19.

And it came to pass on the third day. Here is another prominent element in the miracle of Sinai, that is generally overlooked, viz., the fact that Moses through divine illumination so definitely predicted that the miraculous occurrence would take place in three days. By identifying him all along with Gods revelation the miraculous mystery of his inner life is obliterated. That there were thunders and lightnings.All this animated description of the miraculous event Keil takes literally, and following Deu 4:11; Deu 5:20 (23), expands the account, although if the mountain was burning in the literal sense of the word so that its flame ascended up to heaven, there would be no place for clouds and cloudy darkness. In a thunder-storm are united both nocturnal darkness and flaming light. Keil quotes various conjectures concerning the trumpet sound. No reference is had to the trumpet sound made by the voice of God in the ghostly sphere of the remorseful conscience of a whole people. But comp. Joh 12:29. That the darkness indicates the invisibility and unapproachableness of the holy God who veils Himself from mortals even when He discloses Himself, is evident from all the analogies of clouds up to the sacred one in which Christ ascended. Fire has a twofold side, according to mans attitude towards the divine government; it is therefore, as Keil says, at once the fire of the zeal of anger and the zeal of love. To unite both ideas in one, it is the fire of the power that sanctifies, which therefore purges, transforms, vivifies, and draws upward, as is shown by the ascension of Elijah and the phenomena of the day of Pentecost. The same is true of thunder. Since the law is now given for the first time, this can have nothing to do with the thunder of the last judgment. Vid. on Revelation, p. 197.All the people trembled. While in this mood they are led by Moses out of the camp to the foot of the mountain. It is, to be sure, hardly to be supposed that this denotes a march from the plain of Rahah into that of Sebaiyeh. The people, i.e., the men, says Keil,a limitation for which there is little reason.And all mount Sinai smoked.The view of the scene is renewed and intensified, the nearer the people come to the foot of the mountain. Moses speaking, and God answering.Glorious definition of the nature of law! All of Gods commands are, so to speak, answers to the commands and questions of Gods chosen servant; they grow out of a reciprocal action of God and the inmost heart of humanity.

6. The Calling of Moses alone up to the Mount, etc. Exo 19:20-25.

And Jehovah said unto Moses.There must be some significance in the fact that Moses is required again to descend from Sinai, in order repeatedly to charge the people not to cross the limit in order to gaze, because by this sin many might perish. This direction is now even extended to the priests; and in accordance with their position they are exposed to the sentence of death even in the camp unless they sanctify themselves; only Aaron is permitted to go up in company with Moses. So sharp a distinction is made between the theocratic life of the people, between the sphere of sacerdotal ordinances (which, therefore, already exist), and the sphere of revelation, of which Moses is the organ. That Aaron is allowed to accompany him when the first oral revelation of the law is made, indicates that in and with him the priests, and gradually also the whole priestly nation, which begins to assume a priestly relation to mankind in the near presence of the law, are to be lifted up into the light of revelation. Various views of this passage, especially a discussion of Kurtzs opinion, are to be found in Keil. Knobel finds here an interpolation of the Jehovist.

Inasmuch now as the narrative makes the law of the ten commandments follow immediately, whilst Moses seems to be standing below with the people, a literal interpretation concludes that Jehovah communicated the ten commandments down from Mt. Sinai immediately to the people, and so the fundamental law of the theocracy has a precedence over all others (Knobel; see also Keil, p. 106). The fact that Jehovah has already given answer to Moses on the mountain, is overlooked; as also the passages Exo 24:15 sqq.; 34; Deu 5:5; Deu 33:4, to say nothing of Galatians 3 and other passages. It is true, the representation here is designed to make the impression that the law of the ten commandments, although mediated by Moses, has yet the same authority as if Jehovah had spoken it directly to the people from Sinai; and no less does it express the pre-eminent importance of the ten commandments. The following distinctions are marked: As oral (or spiritual) words Moses receives the divine answers on the mountain (Exo 19:19). Then God addresses the same words from Sinai in the voices of thunder to the people at the foot of the mountain; and Moses, who stands below with the people, is the interpreter of these voices, as is clearly shown by Deu 5:5. This oral, spiritual law of principles, which is echoed in the conscience of all the people, as if Jehovah were directly talking with them, is the foundation for the establishment and enforcement of the written law engraved on the stone tablets.

Footnotes:

[1][Exo 19:13. The repetition of the word touch () naturally suggests the thought that the object is the same as in the preceding verse, viz., mount. But this cannot be the case. For (1) if this were so, it is not probable that the word hand would be used, especially after the more general prohibition. The second prohibition would be weaker than the first, for one would most naturally touch the mountain with the foot, not the hand. But (2) more decisive still is the consideration that the conjunction does not admit of this construction. It can here only have the meaning but in the sense of the German sondern, i.e, but on the contrary. As the verse stands in A. V., a reader would most naturally understand but to be equivalent to but that, and the meaning to be, No hand shall touch it wilhout his being stoned, etc., which, however, cannot have been the meaning of the translators, and certainly not of the Hebrew author. On the other hand, it makes no sense to say, No hand shall touch the mountain, but on the contrary he shell be stoned. The meaning must be: No hand shall touch him, i.e., the offender; but he shall be killed without such contact by being stoned or shot.Tr.]

[2][The last two verbs in this verse are in the Imperfect tense, and hence express continued action. The Hebrew does not say, when the voice. waxed louder and londer, [then] Moses spake, etc., especially not, if when is understood to be equivalent to atter. We have endeavored to give the true sense by the participial rendering.Tr.]

[3]This is perhaps in general the reason for stoning.

[4][There seems to be no inconsistency between Knobels view and that of Keil. The latter understands the sound of the trumpet (Exo 19:13) to be the signal, and so does Knobel. And both assume that the signal was to follow the promulgation of the law.Tr.].

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

This Chapter contains the record of that memorable event to which all the subsequent acts of the Church have reference; the giving of the Law upon Mount Sinai, amidst the glorious manifestation of the Divine Presence. Israel, being now arrived at the holy mount, after a journey of between forty and fifty days, from their departure from Egypt, are gathered together to receive the law of God. The preparations for this, together with the awful signs which accompanied it, are related in this Chapter.

Exo 19:1

Sinai is so called from the vast number of thorny bushes growing upon it. Some have computed this journey of Israel from Egypt to Sinai, and made it 50 days. And hence have drawn somewhat of a parallel between the feast of Pentecost, which Isa 50 days from the passover, and that of Israel after the Passover arriving in 50 days to Mount Sinai. And indeed without doing violence to the subject, it is worthy of remark, that as in the one instance God came down in the presence of his people, and revealed himself on Mount Sinai, 50 days after their deliverance from the graves of Egypt; so in the other, God the Holy Ghost came down 50 days after the Lord Jesus arose from the grave, and manifested himself by speaking to their hearts. Reader! do not overlook the spiritual sense of all that refers to this history. Gal 4:24-25 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Exo 19:4-5

A great deliverance, whether of a man or of a society, is a great claim on the life that is saved. The Israelites carried with them a grand inheritance of holiness and truth. They were saved because of it. As a nation they betrayed it.

Edward Thring.

References. XIX. 6, 6. Bishop Gibson, The Old Testament in the New, p. 31. XIX. 6. Bishop Diggle, Sermons for Daily Life, p. 100.

Exo 19:10

After the deification of the emperors we are told that it was considered impious so much as to use any coarse expression in the presence of their images. To Marius the whole of life seemed full of sacred presences demanding of him a similar collectedness.

Pater, Marius the Epicurean, i. p. 24.

Exo 19:11

Lady Beaumont told me that when she was a child, previously to her saying her prayers, she endeavoured to think of a mountain or great river, or something great, in order to raise up her soul and kindle it.

Coleridge, Anima Poet, p. 56.

Exo 19:16

Rituals, Liturgies, Credos, Sinai Thunder: I know more or less the history of these; the rise, progress, decline and fall of these. Can thunder from all the thirty-two azimuths, repeated daily for centuries of years, make God’s laws more godlike to me? Brother, No. Perhaps I am grown to be a man now; and do not heed the thunder and the terror any longer! Perhaps I am above being frightened; perhaps it is not Fear, but Reverence alone, that shall now lead me.

Carlyle, Past and Present.

Reference. XIX. 20. K. Moody-Stuart, Light from the Holy Hills, p. 35.

Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson

1. In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai (about eighteen miles).

2. For they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the mount.

3. And Moses went up unto God (ascended Sinai), and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain (while he was yet a great way off), saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel:

4. Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings (“As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them upon her wings”), and brought you unto myself (out of Egypt and its corrupting influences).

5. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure (some valuable possession which the owner has got by his own exertions) unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:

6. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.

7. And Moses came and called for the elders (the usual channel of communication) of the people, and laid before their faces (a curious piece of literalism) all these words which the Lord commanded him.

8. And all the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do. And Moses returned (reported) the words of the people unto the Lord.

9. And the Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud (in the denseness of a cloud) that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for ever. And Moses told the words of the people unto the Lord.

10. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them (an outward purification symbolic of inward fitness) to day and to morrow, and let them wash their clothes (the Levitical law requires the washing of clothes on many occasions),

11. And be ready against the third day: for the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai

12. And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death:

13. There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount.

The Results of Obedience

Exo 19:1-13

Israel having gone from Rephidim, came to the desert of Sinai, and there Moses, having gone up the mountain, received from God a distinct message, “If ye will obey my voice, ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me.” This is a tabernacle without form; this is a sanctuary not made with hands. If we can seize the meaning of this passage we shall have in our hands one of the key-paragraphs of the whole history. Let us try to classify the thoughts which grow as in a garden planted by the Lord himself; a garden whose hedges are far away; for he whose mercy endureth for ever makes no small gardens; he would, indeed, have no desert land.

Here is a Gospel originating in heaven. Moses is not the leading speaker. No desire has been expressed by the people that any such arrangement as this should be completed. The movement is always from above. The rains that water the earth, that make it bring forth and bud, are clouds far above our heads and far beyond our influence. The great thoughts all come down tipped with a light above the brightness of the sun. If any man lack wisdom he is to ask of God. It is not a plant that is grown in the clay; it is a flower that blossoms and blooms in the eternal paradise. Keep this steadily in mind in the perusal of the sacred record, that no great thought ever came from the human side. Man has had but to reply; the infinite appeals of judgment and of grace have come out of the hidden heavens. We are, therefore, debtors to grace. We have nothing that is worth having that is of our own invention or manufacture. All eternal thought and all eternal feeling, being wise, pure, and beneficent, can be traced to him who giveth all good and perfectness. This is the foundation thought.

Now comes a Divine method which attests the heavenliness of its origin, having about it all the mystery of the infinite and unspeakable. God says: “If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant.” Can he not make them do so? There is no compulsion in worship, or in morals, or in true spiritual obedience. A child can turn his back upon God and treat the Almighty with sullenness. The tiniest knee can stiffen itself, and decline to bow before the heavens. In its bodily relation, it can be crushed, broken, destroyed; but representing the mind, the heart, the will, God cannot bend that obstinate iron. So God begins by seeking consent. Man has to be a party to this marvellous covenant If we sing, it is because our love is so burning that we cannot keep back the music; if we obey, it is because our hearts consent to the statute which demands obedience. Has God, then, given any detailed laws up to this time which he means the people to accept? No. Here is the wondrousness of the method, the laws using that word in the plural number have yet to come. Mark the Divine wisdom the wondrous reach of the Divine thought. To have come with ten words, or a thousand lines of statute and precept would have excited argument and discontent, criticism, and possible rebellion. Not a word was said about the detail. God will not light the mountain until the sacrifice is prepared; the smoke, and the fire, and the trumpet will come by-and-by. What is first wanted? The spirit, not the act, of obedience. Everything turns upon that distinction. God asks broadly and comprehensively for obedience. He must have a spirit in tune with the music of his own purpose, and then, as to the separate melodies that must be played, they will fall into their right place, and will assume new relations and new value, because of the spirit of obedience which has been enkindled and sanctified in the human heart. That is the Divine philosophy not to come with two tables of stone, and to invite detailed criticism and wordy controversy, but to face the creature, as it were, and to say, “Wilt thou obey thy Creator in very deed?” The creature answers gladly, “I will.” After that you may have as many tables of stone as the occasion requires, or as human development may call for in the ages of education yet to dawn upon an advancing race.

Mark the wondrousness of the Divine providence, and the Divine method: First, the spirit of obedience is created; then the separate words, or individual and singular laws, are uttered to a prepared heart. Probably it could be proved that a great deal of our conscious disobedience has arisen from our looking at the law we have to obey, rather than preparing the heart to obey the whole counsel of God. You have no right to look at the laws, until you have promised obedience, and pledged with an oath of the heart that you will be true to the Divine proposals. Men first disqualify themselves for judgment, and then proceed to criticism; they say, “What are the Commandments?” That is not a permissible inquiry. We are not dealing with plurals and details, with daily discipline and momentary demands; we are dealing with the soul of things, with the spirit of man, with the mood and temper of the heart. Granted that all is right in this direction, then turn to the laws, and you will take them up as a very little thing, understanding the sweet music of him who came to “fulfil the law.” “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” a most heavy yoke and a burden grievous beyond all other weight, if we come to it without a prepared spirit; but having filled the heart with preparedness, and filled the mouth with a song of adoration and a hymn of loyalty, then let the tables of stone come to us: the stones shall have no hardness, and the law shall no longer be arbitrary, but part of the happy music and sacred necessity which characterise the whole order and intent of God.

Here is the explanation of the Divine preferences which have distressed so many hearts under the cruel name of sovereignty and election. There need be no torture in using those words. If we feel distressed by them, it is because we have come upon them along the wrong path. They are beautiful and noble words when set in their places according to the Divine intent. “Then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.” Is that partiality in any exclusive sense? Not at all; it is really meant to be inclusive. God elects humanity. “And ye shall be unto me a kingdom.” In what sense? In the ordinary sense namely, a great aggregate of subjects ruled by one arbitrary and despotic king? In no such sense. The literal meaning is, ye shall all be kings. Now you see the meaning of that great name, “King of kings” not king of an individual monarch here and there, as in Britain, or Russia, or China, but of all believers. All obedient souls are lifted up unto kinghood. We are royal equals if we obey Heaven’s will, and God is King of kings, King of all. We are a royal generation. All this language is typical. Beautiful is the historical line when seized and wisely applied. Let us attempt such seizure and application. The firstborn were chosen, and the firstborn were to be priests. In what sense are the firstborn chosen? Not as relegating the afterborn to positions subordinate and inferior; but in the sense of being their pledge and seal. God has the eldest son, and therefore that is the sacred logic he has all the other children. Then the laws regarding the priesthood underwent a change, and the family of Aaron was called. We proceed from an individual, namely, the firstborn, to a family, namely, the Aaronic stock. But why were they chosen? That all the children of Aaron might also be priests, in the truly spiritual and eternal sense, though not in official and formal name and status. Then the family was deposed and a tribe is chosen the tribe of Levi. Mark how the history accumulates and grows up into a prophecy and an argument! First the individual, then the family, then the tribe, then the Son of man, absorbing all the past, gathering up into its true and official meaning all priesthood, all intercession. There is one Advocate with the Father, the Man Christ Jesus.

A new light thus begins to dawn upon the cloud. There is nothing arbitrary in the movement of God when we can penetrate its infinite philosophy. Will God have the firstfruits of the harvest field? He claims all such. Why will he claim the firstfruits? That in having the firstfruits he might have all the field. He will not take the whole wheat acreage of the world into his heavens and devour our poor loaf of bread; but he will take the first ear of corn that we can find in all the fields, and, having taken that, he says: “In giving me this you have given me all.” He is not to be charged with arbitrariness and severity because he takes one little ear of corn, or one poor little sheep, and says, “This is mine.” He is to be charged with a nobler grace than our fancy had dreamed, for he takes a visit to the poor prisoner as a visit paid to himself, bread given to the poor as bread given to the Triune God. The lifting up of one sheaf of wheat and waving it before him is not the result of an arbitrary sovereignty, but is sign, symbol, and type that we have given him all that “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.” The Lord said to the man whom he constituted the new head of the race: “In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Think of that noble inclusion when you speak of elective sovereignty and reprobating judgment.

This also throws light upon the vexed question of inspiration, We ask, “Why were some inspired?” You say Moses and David, Isaiah and Daniel, and John and Paul they were inspired that we might all be inspired. They are the firstborn; they are the leaders and prototypes. Because Paul was inspired, it does not follow that the Holy Ghost is withheld from us. The Spirit is the abiding Comforter; he is the possession of the whole redeemed and regenerated Church. He will never leave us. Know ye not that ye are the temples of the Holy Ghost? Do not dwarf the mighty argument by asking shallow questions about the relative degrees of inspiration. We cannot discuss an inquiry which lies beyond the evidence at our command. Enough it is to know that the Holy Ghost is Christ’s gift to the whole believing Church. “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him!” So the whole idea of priestism is destroyed, and the whole conception of arbitrary and despotic sovereignty goes down, and must be branded as an unspeakable blasphemy. We are all kings and priests unto God and the Father; we are all royal, chosen, elect, precious. This conception alone fits the character of him who is symbolised by the firmament, and who gives good things to the unthankful and to the evil, as well as to the grateful and the good.

Here is God’s conception of “an holy nation.” A holy nation in the Divine view is an obedient nation, a nation living in the spirit of obedience. Let the spirit of obedience be right, and the letter of obedience will soon become right also. First must come the spirit, then the literal obedience. So in all things. Our Christian character in its integrity and massiveness is destroyed by our foolish attention in the wrong place to detailed precepts and instances. It is notably so in the matter of Christian liberality. There are but few who understand the philosophy of joyous consecration in this department. What is wanting? The total gift. If it were a question of detail as to whether this or that sum should be given, or the whole appeal be shirked, then a series of vexations would torment the conscience and the judgment. There is no such law. We give the all, and therefore it becomes quite easy to give the little particular. But until we have given the all we cannot give the other. It may be extorted from our hands by a complaining conscience, but it is no acceptable oblation on the altar of the Church. It is notably so in the matter of time. How do we come to give one day in seven to Christ’s worship? We do so, when we do it at all properly, because we have first given all the seven days. It is easy to give one in particular when we have consecrated the whole. The one day is the wheat-sheaf taken up from the harvest of time, and God says, receiving it, “You have given me all the days in giving me this, the queenliest of the seven.” This is the meaning of still being under the law and not under grace, namely, that we are striving to do little things, and separate laws, and keep particular commandments with which we have no business, until the soul is adjusted by the meridian of the eternal sovereignty, and the whole spirit goes out only anxious to obey.

Read the commandments in the light of this explanation, and how easy they are. ” Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The soul is amazed as if the conception of having any other God could have dawned upon such glowing love. ” Honour thy father and thy mother.” The spirit springs up, and says, “Nothing can be easier, more delightful, or in accord with my wish.” ” Thou shalt not steal.” The heart is, as it were, momentarily and subtly affronted as if such a commandment could be needed, where the sacrifice of the body is so complete. Was the human obedience first pledged? So was the Divine promise. The way of the Lord is equal. Did he who asked for the obedience lay down the ground of his claim? He did, saying, “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.” First the history, then the obedience, then the promise, then the detailed law; and the detailed law coming after the promise becomes an easy burden, and a yoke so light as to be like a necklet of jewels.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

The Commandments

Exodus 19-20

We cannot get rid of Sinai in human education. If we persuade ourselves by some false reasoning that the things recorded in these chapters did not literally happen, we are playing the fool with ourselves. God could only come to us at the first by the letter. He touches us by infinite accommodations of his own nature and by a gracious study of our own. This is the plague of the imperfect reason, that it will quibble about the incident, the wrappage, and decoration of things. It seems to be unable to penetrate to inmost thoughts, essences, qualities, and meanings. Sinai is in every life. Let us part with as much as we can of the merely external, and still there remains the fact that in our lives are lightnings, and thunderings, and great trumpetings of power, as well as solemn claims and urgent appeals to every quality and force in our nature. Who has not been in stony places in the carrying out of his education, great, black, inhospitable localities, well called wildernesses; wild and howling deserts; mountains of stone; embodiments of difficulty; types of arduous discipline and inexorable demand? Why play the fool? Why miss the wine of God’s grace and wisdom by asking narrow or foolish questions about the vessel which contains it, when within the whole mystery of life there stands the barren mountain the inhospitable sand stretches mile on mile on every hand and nothing speaks to us in all the terrific scene but law, claim, and obligation the tremendous demand of an unyielding creditor, who has come to arrest and imprison us until the uttermost farthing be paid? Our spiritual experience makes the letter quite small. There are still those who are asking questions about the local Sinai, the narrow and comparatively trivial incident, and are missing all the poetry of the occasion, not hearing the Divine and solemn voice, and not answering the sublime demand for more perfect purification, completer refinement, and profounder obedience. Why not start our inquiries from the other side? What is this voice of law? What is this standard of discipline which forces itself upon our moral attention? What is this claim that is pressed upon us by every variety of expression which follows us, now affrontingly, now pleading, according to the moral phase which we exhibit towards it? Did we begin our inquiry at that end, and so come along the line of revelation, Sinai, the local mountain, and the desert, and all trumpetings, thunderings, lightnings, tempests, all upheavals, and earthquakes, and terrible scenes, would fall into their right proportion and relation, and the one sovereign thought would be, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?

Instead of looking at the commandments one by one, and thus running the risk of missing their whole meaning, let us look at the commandments in their totality and call them One Commandment with many different phases, and aspects, and bearings upon human life.

What is the teaching of that great law pronounced from heaven? Is there any grace in it? Is there any touch of love? Is there any trembling of pathos? Is it all hard iron? Is it all tremendous exaction, pitiless, tyrannous claim? Have we always read the commandments aright? and have we been just to their innermost meaning when we have characterised them as hard? I think not. What do these commandments urge upon us? A right view of God. That is the first injunction. We are called to right theology not of a formal and technical, but of a moral and spiritual kind. The great movement of the heart must first of all be Godward. We cannot work until the soul is brought into the right mood and proper quality by a full perception of the sovereignty and righteous claim and tender grace of God. We cannot break in upon the commandments where we please, and obey the law in parts and parcels. There is a temptation to think we can do so. We are sometimes tempted to think that we can keep the eighth commandment, but not the fifth; the fourth, but not the ninth; the tenth, but not the first, and so on. That is impossible. To keep one commandment is to keep all; to offend in one commandment is to break all. This may not seem to be so on the surface; but a complete analysis of the occasion and circumstances will result in the finding that the commandments are one law, complete, indivisible, only set forth in points and aspects for the convenience of learners, and as an accommodation to the infirmity or incompleteness of children. First of all, then, we are called to a right view of God. We cannot move one step in a right direction until something like this view has been realised. Every succeeding commandment will be dumb to us, if we have not entered into the mystery of the first. What is God to us? What are his claims upon us? What is there in us that responds to his presence, and that, so to say, reveals him before he comes with any obvious manifestation of his personality upon us? Are we akin? Are we his children? Is there any sound in the ear or the heart which, being interpreted, means, “In the beginning God made man in his own image and likeness”? That is our first study. We shall be mere moralists if we begin at the second commandment. That is so-called legalism and morality, the pedantry which snaps off the commandments from the great central stem and treats them as separate particles, as isolated possibilities of virtue. We must come from the Divine point, from the spiritual communion of the soul with God, and then the commandments will come upon our souls as appeals to our power, and as sweet necessities, not as arbitrary impositions and tyrannies.

What next have we in this consolidated commandment? Having a right view of God, we have a right view, in the next place, of labour. God condescends to take notice of our working ways, of our allotments and appointments of a temporal kind. The voice of mercy is in this injunction regarding labour. In effect, God says to us, “You must not always toil; your heads must not be bent down in continual proneness to the earth; you may labour six days, but the seventh part of your time should be devoted to spiritual communion, to the culture of the upper and better nature, to the promotion of your higher and nobler education.” This is the gracious law; but, say, is this law without tears? Is this commandment without grace? Is there no mercy here? Is there not a subtle allusion to an earlier charter in which God made man to commune with himself? If you are doomed to seven days’ work, it is against God’s mind. If any have to work seven days for the mouthful of bread they need, it is the doing of an enemy; it is not the claim of God. I ask you to praise him for this defence of feeble human nature and this plea for a higher human education. Do not fritter away the blessing by technical inquiry and pedantic analysis of meaning. The sublime, infinite purpose is this: that man is more than a labourer; he is a worshipper; he is a kinsman of God; he has belongings in the sky. A religion that thus comes to me and takes me away from my toil, and bids me rest awhile and think of the larger quantities, and the more ample time, and the heavenly kingdoms, is a religion I cannot afford to do without. It is a religion of grace; it is a religion which knows my necessities, pities my infirmities, spares my wasting strength. The Sabbath, in its spiritual aspect and meaning, is one of the strongest defences of the inspiration of the Bible and the Divinity of the religion which it reveals. It is man’s day and God’s day; more thoroughly man’s day because completely God’s day. It is their united time, time of fellowship, hour of communion, opportunity for deeper reading, larger prayer, and Diviner consecration.

Having a right view of God and a right view of labour, we have also a right view of physiology. The Bible takes care of man’s body. Thou shalt not waste it; thou shalt not poison it; thou shalt not degrade the inner nature by a prostitution of the outer constitution. “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” A commandment which so speaks to us is associated with a religion that is no merely spiritual phantasy. This is a practical monitor. It enters every room, remains in the house night and day, tarries as a guest seven days a week, goes out with us to the marketplace, takes care of our bodily ablution and cleansing, and regards the sanctity of the body with a Divine care. Who are they that tell us that the Bible religion is a superstition, an affair of fancy, something having in it bright points here and there, and to be treated with proportionate respect? The Bible searches us, tries us, and finds if there is any wicked way in us, and is as careful about the body in its degree as about the soul in its higher plane, because nobler quantity. No man ill-treats his body with the permission of the Bible; no soul quenches its thirst at forbidden wells with the sanction of the Book which we believe to be God’s. The Bible would keep society sweet, would watch over our life with ineffable tenderness, would have us right in tone, wholesome, good at every point. A book so graciously exacting, charged with so Divine a spirit of discipline, is a book which will survive every assault made upon it, and return to the confidence of man after many an act of apostacy and ingratitude on his part.

A right view of God, a right view of labour, a right view of physiology, and then a right view of society. Not only is God interested in the individual man, he is also interested in the social, imperial, national world humanity. What says he? “Thou shalt not kill,” however hot thy blood, thou shalt not kill; however apparently just thine anger, restrain thyself, lift not the hand to strike, have no weapon in thy fist, “Thou shalt not kill.” Woe betide society when it holds human life lightly, when it regards human existence as a mere trifle in an infinite aggregate of circumstances and events! Blessed be that society which numbers the hairs of its children, in which a sparrow is not lost without knowledge, and in which a gracious economy will gather up the fragments that nothing be lost! This is Christian society which will not allow one chair to be vacant. Seeing that vacant chair, Christian solicitude becomes akin to Divine agony; a parental yearning makes the heart sore because one little child is absent, one wanderer is not at home, one man is missing.

“Thou shalt not steal.” It is not enough to be less than a murderer, we must be honest, not superficially honest, not having hands merely untainted with overt crime, and theft, and felony; but thoroughly honest, sweet in the soul, really, superbly, almost Divinely honest in thought, in speech, in feeling, and in all the relations of life. Where is there an honest man, except in the common and superficial sense of a man who is not a thief? Honesty is not a negative virtue; honesty is a positive excellence. It renders to every man his due; it steals no man’s reputation; it trifles with the property of no heart; it is more anxious to give than to take away. “Thou shalt not covet.” We are becoming more spiritual still. “Thou shalt not kill,” to that we assented readily; “Thou shalt not steal,” to that we also assented with large concession; “Thou shalt not covet,” who knows when he covets? We can covet in secret; we can covet, and never speak about the covetousness. Desire need not commit itself to audible terms. We can desire what another man has and yet can look the embodiment of innocence. The law is now becoming sharper, keener, more like a two-edged sword piercing to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow. We cannot keep company with this law in its inner and deeper meanings without finding that its intention is to divide us asunder, and search us, and try us, and never leave us until we become like the Lawgiver himself. Can we wonder that Jesus Christ said he had not come to destroy but to fulfil? that is, to interpret the law and give it its fullest and deepest meaning. When asked what the law was, he said, ‘All the law is fulfilled in one word love.” But we read the commandments and found no love in them, because we misread every tone in the ancient and solemn music. You could not have the commandment but for the love which makes it law. Outwardly it looks iron-like, stern, rigorous, exacting, pitiless; but within its heart is large as the heart of God.

Mark the elevation of the commandments, of what god are they unworthy? Their Divinity must have impressed us. Point out one weak word; lay the critical finger upon one line that is wanting in intellectual dignity or in moral splendour. By the nature of the laws themselves their inspiration may be vindicated. A bold task it was for any mere poet or dreamer to attempt to invent a commandment which would be worthy of God; but the task was realised. Great opening lines have been expressed in the very finest terms, in the most delicate and exquisite exactions and compulsions. Nowhere does this Decalogue fray away into pointlessness, vagueness, intellectual meanness, moral declension. From first to last the level is one, and the level is worthy of God. To find fault with the commandments is to injure ourselves; to trifle with the commandments is to jeopardise society. They are not repeated formally in the New Testament, but they are fulfilled in that holy covenant. We are now in Christ Jesus, if we are living up to Gospel privileges and opportunities; and, being in him, we breathe the commandments, rather than execute them as with arduous effort. They become part of our very life; they belong to us as the fragrance belongs to the odorous flower. They are no longer burdens grievous to be borne. We love them because we have experienced their love. Away with moral legerdemain! Away with the gymnastics which attempt to climb to heaven by their own moral cleverness! We must go the right road, from God to man, from the law to the neighbour, from the heavenly image to the social obligation; and if the Church would, in the spirit of Christ, without one taint of legalism or servility, keep the commandments, we should have a right view of God, a right view of labour, a right view of the body, and a right view of society. The life would be consolidated upon love and law, and lifting itself up with infinite strength, would be crowned with beauty, and on the top of the pillar would be lilywork; RIGHTEOUSNESS and GRACE would form one noble, sublime, everlasting figure.

Note

“The promulgation of the law, including the construction of the tabernacle, occupied nearly twelve months from Whitsuntide to Whitsuntide as we should say. Throughout this period the people were encamped in the wide plain at the foot of the ‘Mount of God.’ The whole region seems to be called ‘Horeb’; the mount is called ‘Sinai.’ Travellers seem now disposed to identify it with an isolated mountain which rises so abruptly from the great plain at its foot, that its northern cliff might be said to be touched by one standing in the plain. The northern peak is called Ras-Susfeh; the southern, Jebel-Msa. It rises to a height of 2,000 feet above the plain, and about 7,000 above the sea level.” Bible Educator.

“A spacious plain (Er Rahah) confronts a precipitous cliff 2,000 feet in height, which forms the north-western boundary of that great mountain block called Jebel-Msa, which tradition and the opinion of travellers and authors of eminence alike point to as the mountain of the law. The plain is of a level character as flat as the palm ( rahah ) of the open hand. It is large enough, if needs be, to encamp all the hosts of the Israelites. There are fully 400 acres of the plain proper, exactly facing the mount, with a wide lateral valley, which extends right and left from the base of the cliffs. Besides this, there is a considerable further open space extending northwestward from the watershed or crest of the plain, but still in sight of the mount the very spot, it may be, to which the trembling Israelites ‘removed and stood afar off’ when they feared to come nigh by reason of the cloud and thick darkness.” Captain Palmer.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

XII

THE COVENANT AT SINAI ITS GENERAL FEATURES

Exo 19:1-24:11

The covenant at Sinai is the central part of the Old Testament. There is no more important part than the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, coupled with all of the transactions that took place while the children of Israel remained there. We first discuss, in catechetical form, the covenant in its general features.

1. Describe the place of the covenant.

Ans. The name of the place is sometimes called Sinai and sometimes Horeb. Moses himself calls it each one. Horeb is the range of mountains of which Sinai is the chief peak. So you speak truly when you say that the law was given at Horeb and at Sinai. But that there is a distinction between the two, you have only to see that at Rephidim, where the rock was smitten, it was a part of the high range, and is called, in Exo 17:6 , the rock in Horeb; and yet the succeeding chapters show that they had not yet gotten to Sinai. In describing the place, then, the first thing is to give its name, which is the range of mountains called Horeb, whose chief peak is Sinai. The second idea of the place is that this range of mountains, including Sinai, is situated in Southern Arabia between two arms of the sea, and the triangular district between those two arms of the sea is called the Sianitic peninsula. The third part of the answer in describing the place is this: The immediate place has a valley two and one half miles long by one and one-half miles wide, perfectly level and right under Sinai. Sinai goes up like a precipice for a considerable distance, then slopes toward the peak, and Overlooks a valley and a plain, for it is a long way above the level of the sea. This valley is the only place in all tin country where the people could be brought together in one body for such purposes as were transacted here. Modern re- search has made it perfectly clear that this valley right under Sinai is the place for the camp, and you can put three millions of people there, and then up the gorges on the mountain sides there is abundant range for their flocks and herds.

2. What are the historical associations of this place, before and since?

Ans. It was called the Mount of God before Moses ever saw it, and there was a good road into these mountains prepared by the Egyptians in order to get to certain mines which they had in the mountains of Horeb. Since that time we associate Horeb with Elijah when he got scared and ran a the way from Samaria to Mount Sinai a big run; he was very badly scared; and what he was scared at was more terrible than a man; a woman was after him. He was not afraid of Ahab, but he was afraid of Jezebel. Now, Sinai is associated with Elijah; and I believe that Jesus went to Sinai, an I am sure Paul did. He says when he was called to preach, “I did not go to Jerusalem for the people there to tell me now to preach, but I went into Arabia.” He stayed there three years, and, as I think, he came down to this place when the Law was given, in order to catch the spirit of the occasion of the giving of the Law from looking at the mountain itself and there received the revelations of the new covenant which was to supersede the covenant given upon Mount Sinai. Long after Paul’s time the historical associations of Sinai are abundant. Many of the books that teach about the Crusades have remarkable incidents in connection with the Sinaitic Peninsula and particularly this mountain. If you were there today, you would see buildings perpetuating Mosaic incidents, and on this mountain is a convent belonging to the Eastern, the Greek church, rather than to the Roman church; and in that convent Tischendorf found the famous Sinaitic manuscript of the New Testament, which is the oldest, the best and the most complete. There are associations in connection with Sinai which extend to the fifteenth century and even after.

3. What was the time of the arrival of these people at this mountain?

Ans. The record says, “In the third month after the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the game day came they into the wilderness of Sinai.” In chapter 16 it says: “And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt.” They left Egypt on the fifteenth and were in the wilderness of Sin on the fifteenth of the next month, one month’s time; but while it is only one month in time, it covered parts of two months. “Now in the third month”, but just where in it the record does not say they reached Sinai. Another question on that directly.

In discussing this subject, I shall have the following general heads: (1) The Preparation for the Covenant; (2) The Covenant Itself; (3) The Stipulations of the Covenant; (4) The Covenant Accepted; (5) The Covenant Ratified; (6) The Feast of the Covenant. That will be the order of this chapter.

4. What was the proposition and reply?

Ans. In chapter 19 the proposition for the covenant comes from God in these words: “And Moses went up unto God, and Jehovah called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel [here’s the proposition]: Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be mine own possession from among all peoples: For all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.” On those terms God proposes a covenant. Now, let us see if the people agree to enter into covenant with God: “And Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which Jehovah commanded him. And all the people answered together and said, All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do.” Moses then reported back to God what the people said here was a mutual agreement on the part of the people enter into a covenant (Exo 19:7-8 ).

5. What was the method of Jehovah’s approach in order enter the covenant?

Ans. The theophanv. “Theonhany” means an appearance of God. God says to Moses, in describing how he will come, that he will come in a cloud; that they won’t see him; but they will see the cloud and hear his voice; an appearance of God, some of it visible, a cloud that envelops God, and voice Heard.

6. What was the preparation for this covenant they se to enter into?

Ans. The first part of it was to sanctify the mountain “Sanctify” means to set apart, or to make holy; to sanctify a mountain is to set it apart. That mountain which was to be the scene and place of this great covenant between God and the people was set apart, things set upon it, fenced about’, with the prohibitions of God: “Don’t you come too close I it; don’t touch it.” Just as God fenced the burning bush when he said to Moses “Don’t, draw nigh; stop, you are enough; take the shoes off your feet; this is holy ground.” The next part of the preparation was to sanctify the people. This was done ceremonially. They were ceremonially purified, as is expressed in these words: “Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto Jehovah to gaze, and many of them perish. And let the priests also that come near to Jehovah, sanctify themselves, lest Jehovah break forth upon them.”

7. What was to be the signal which would bring the people close to that mountain and put them into the presence of God?

Ans. It was a trumpet sound, described on this occasion in such a way as to thrill the people hearing the sound. This sound was prolonged, and thus it waxed louder and louder and louder a fearful, unearthly sound. No human lips blew that trumpet earth never heard it before; the earth will hear it again only one more time, and that when Christ comes to judge the world; he will then come with the sound of a trumpet.

8. What was to be the time when God and the people, after this preparation, should come together?

Ans. On the third day.

9. Describe Jehovah’s coming on the third day and compare Deu 4:10-12 .

Ans. The record says, “And it came to pass on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; and all the people that were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And Mount Sinai) the whole of it, smoked, because Jehovah descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice” (Exo 19:16-19 ). In Deu 4:10-12 , Moses describes it again, referring to that great occasion, the theophany, and he uses this language: “The day that thou stoodest before Jehovah thy God in Horeb, when Jehovah said unto me, Assemble me the people, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children. And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the heart of heaven, with darkness, cloud, and thick darkness. And Jehovah spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of words but ye saw no form; only ye heard a voice.” “Form” or similitude is a likeness; “you heard a voice, but saw no likeness or similitude of God.”

10. Who was the mediator of this covenant between God: and the people?

Ans. You will notice that the people and God do not come together directly. In the book of Job he says, “There is no daysman who shall stand between me and God, touching God, touching me.” If God had revealed himself visibly to the people and directly, the sight would have killed them, for they were a sinful people. In order to get to them, then, there was a necessity for a middleman, a mediator; one who should approach God for the people and approach the people for God. Now who was this mediator? Moses.

11. What part did the angels take, and how signified?

Ans. In the later books of the Bible we learn that this law was given by the disposition of angels and was signified by that trumpet, the trumpet served to summon the whole army of God’s angels.

12. When again will it sound, and why?

Ans. When the judgment day comes: “He shall come with the sound of the trumpet”; and when that trumpet sounds, its object is not to wake the dead, according to the Negro theology, but to marshal the angels, to bring them back with him.

13. What are the great lessons of this preparation?

Ans. Let us get these clearly in our minds:

(1) That this is to be a theocratic covenant. I want you to get the idea of this, viz.: The difference between a democratic covenant (made with all the people), an aristocratic covenant (made with the nobles, the best of the people) and a theocratic covenant, one in which God alone makes the stipulation. The people don’t prescribe anything. God tells everything that is to be done, either on his part or on their part. All the people have to do in a theocratic covenant is to say “yes” or “no”; to accept or reject.

(2) That it was a mediatorial covenant) not a covenant directly between God and the people, but a covenant in which a daysman goes between, a mediator to transmit from God to the people, and from the people to God.

(3) The third great lesson is that the people, in order to enter into a covenant with God, even through a mediator, must have the following requirements:

(a) They must make a great voluntary decision (Exo 24:8 ). You remember when Elijah summoned all the people to meet him on the mountain with the prophets of Baal, and had the test as to who was God, and the prophets of Baal were to try to bring proof that they represented God, and he was to prove that he represented God; that he proposed to them that day to make a great decision: “How long halt ye?” “Halt” does not mean to “linger,” but to “limp”; a halting man in the Bible is a “limping” man. “How long hobble ye as a limping man between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him; if Baal be God, follow him” (1Ki 18:21-40 ). This is the lesson: That what the people must do was to make this great decision. Moses could not make it for them. They were brought up there; they had plenty of ground on which to stand; that valley was two and a half miles long and one and a half miles wide; and God could speak loud enough for them to hear him, and anything they said he could hear. “Now, you people, will you make this decision?” And they said, “We will.”

(b) The people must have fear toward Jehovah. “You are not entering into a covenant with a dumb idol, but with the living God.”

(c) “And you must have reverence. Don’t get too close to the divine presence; don’t try to break through that fence; don’t touch the mountain; do not presume to be intimate with Jehovah. You must have reverence.”

(d) The next requirement was holiness; and that holiness is a sanctifying by the ceremonial purification. The last requirement

(e) is obedience. “Will you obey? Will you do it.?” Suppose now, to give you, the idea perfectly, I ask again: What are the great lesson from this preparation? Theocratic covenant; lessons of the mediatorial covenant; What the people must do: decide, fear God, have reverence, be purified, obey God. That discusses the first part of the preparation for the covenant. We will now discuss, in general terms, the covenant itself.

14. Give proofs that what we call the giving of the law of Mount Sinai is a covenant as well as a law.

Ans. The evidence of its being a covenant is presented by the meaning of the word “covenant,” viz.: agreement between two, under stipulations binding either party. That is a covenant; and the ratification takes place by the sacrifice of a victim. All the covenants of the Old Testament are of that kind. As a proof that this is a covenant, God, the party of the first part, makes the proposition to enter into the covenant; then the people agree to it; and next, God prescribes, what he will do, and what they must do. These are the stipulations of the covenant. Then the people must accept formally after they have heard all the stipulations, and then comes the ratification. In Exo 24:1-8 , we have an account of the ratification. In this chapter I shall speak of it more as a covenant than as a law.

15. What are its three constituent parts, binding the people?

Ans. Whatever mistakes you make, do not make a mistake in answering this question. It is just as clear as a sunbeam that this covenant entered into on Mount Sinai has three distinctive, constituent parts:

(1) The moral law (Exo 20:17 ), the Ten Commandments, the first part of the covenant.

(2) The altar, or law of approach to God (Exo 20:24-26 ; Exo 23:14-19 ). In case you cannot keep the moral law, the law of the altar comes in.

(3) The civil or national law, (Exodus 1-23:13). Now, what are the constituent parts of the covenant? Moral law, law of the altar, or way of approach to God, also the civil, or national law. The civil law of judgments covers several chapters: they are all a part of this covenant. Now, let us separate those ideas:

(1) Relates to the character of the person;

(2) to the way you can approach God, if you fail in character;

(3) to the civil, or national affairs. Israel was a nation. This is not Abraham making a covenant; it is not Moses making one; it is a nation entering into a covenant with God, to be his treasure, his peculiar people. And I venture to say that everything else in the Pentateuch, whether in the rest of the book of Exodus, in Leviticus, in Numbers, or in Deuteronomy, everything is developed from one or other of these three things. All Leviticus is developed from the law of the altar; it is just simply an elaboration of that part of this covenant they entered into with God, and was enacted when they were at Sinai. All that part of Numbers up to the time they left Sinai (first ten chapters) is a development of one or another of these three parts. Every new enactment which comes in Numbers, every restatement occurring in Deuteronomy must be collocated there with the moral law and with the altar law, or with the national law. I had the pleasure at Brownwood, Texas, at the request of the school, the churches, and the people there, to deliver a lecture on Leviticus, so as in one lecture to give those people an idea of the book. And the first thing I wrote on the blackboard was: “Everything in the book of Leviticus is developed from that part of the covenant given on Mount Sinai which relates to the law of the altar, or the way of approach to God.”

16. In what prophecy is it shown that this covenant given on Mount Sinai shall be superseded by a new covenant with different terms?

Ans. Jeremiah is the prophet. The passage commences: “In the last days, saith the Lord, I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not like the covenant I made with them when I led them out of Egypt.” Jeremiah then shows how different the terms of the new covenant shall be from those of the covenant given at Sinai (Jer 31:31-34 ).

17. Where in the New Testament are the terms of the two covenants contrasted in this form: “Do and thou shalt live,” and “Live and (thou shalt) do”?

Ans. You are bound to see that there is a sharp contrast between the new and the old covenants. If this old covenant says, “Do in order to live,” and the new one says, “Live in order to do,” you must be alive before you can do; and they then start in different directions, keep going away from each other, one going up, the other going down. Where in the New Testament is that thought brought out? (Rom 10:5 ff.)

18. Where in the New Testament is the contrast between the two covenants expressed in allegory?

Ans. Gal 4:24 ff.

19. What three books of the New Testament best expound the covenants as contrasted?

Ans. Galatians, Romans, and Hebrews (in that order), particularly, Hebrews. And now comes a question of chronology.

20. What is the support for the Jewish tradition that this covenant was enacted the fiftieth day after the Passover sacrifice in Exo 12 ?

Ans. You know the Jews always have maintained that the law given on Mount Sinai was on the fiftieth day after the Passover was celebrated; just as in the New Testament the Holy Spirit was given on the fiftieth day after the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Alexander Campbell makes a great point of that: The giving of the new covenant law must be on the fiftieth day after Christ’s crucifixion. You could make it a proof this way: Exo 12 says that this month Abib, later called Nisan, i.e., after the captivity it was so called, shall be the beginning of the year to you, and on the fifteenth day of that month they left Egypt, not on the first day of the month, but on the fifteenth, which was the beginning of the new year. The Passover was slain on the night of the fourteenth, and hurriedly eaten. On the fifteenth they marched out. Chapter 16 tells us that on the fifteenth day of the next month, which would be about a month after they left Egypt, they were then in the wilderness of Sin, not very far from Mount Sinai, but only one month gone. Now, there are several stations at which they stopped before reaching Sinai, and they could be at Sinai and waiting three days, devoting the time to preparation, and making the giving of the law on the fiftieth day. The argument can be made out so that the time covered from the leaving of Rameses in Egypt to the arrival at Sinai would be less than two months, as fifty days does not equal two lunar months; there must be fifty-six days to get two lunar months, even.

21. The next question bears on the stipulations of the covenant. Where do we find the stipulations of what God would do for his part?

Ans. What God proposes to do is expressed in Exo 19:5 : “Ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.” Then in Exo 23:20 he enumerates what he will do. “I send an angel before thee, to keep thee by the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. . . . Mine angel shall go before thee . . . and I will cut off the opposing nations . . . and ye shall serve Jehovah your God, and he will bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee . . . I will drive these nations out from before thee. . . . And I will set thy border from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness unto the river [i.e., Euphrates].” In other words, he will do what he promised to Abraham he would do, as to their boundary. That is what he proposes to do.

22. What must the people do?

Aug. Keep those three parts of that covenant, having fear and reverence toward God, and toward his angels and toward Moses, the mediator. That is their part of the covenant.

23. Cite the passage to prove that the people agreed to enter into the covenant when proposed, and cite the passage showing their acceptance of it when stated. Pause Key (Key: Enter!)

Ans. – The covenant having been stated in all of its parts, God propounds to the people the plain question: “Will you accept it?” thus: “Moses told the people all the words of the law,” i.e., the Decalogue, with the judgments, or the civil law, and the law of the altar, or the way of approach to God. And Moses wrote these words and said to the people, “Will you do them?” They said, “We will.” It is very plain that after they had heard they accepted. And the next thing is the ratification.

24. Describe the ratification.

Ans. – I quote it: “Moses rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the mount, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, who offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto Jehovah. And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basins; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant [wrote those in a book; what both parties had obligated themselves to observe] and read in the audience of the people; and they said, All that Jehovah hath spoken will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which Jehovah hath made with you concerning all these words” (Exo 24:4-8 ). That was the ratification.

25. What are the developments in the rest of the Pentateuch from each of the three parts of the covenant?

Ans. – The last chapter of Exodus, all of Leviticus, a large part of Numbers are devoted to the development of the Law of the Altar, Deuteronomy, to the Ten Commandments; a large part of Exodus and some of Deuteronomy, to the Civil Code.

26. In what part was the gospel germ?

Ans. – In the Altar, or Law of Approach to God.

27. What three books are specially commended?

Ans. – Boardman’s Lectures on the Ten Commandments; Butler’s Bible on the Giving of the Law at Sinai; and the) Presbyterian Catechism on the Ten Commandments.

28. What is the sign, or token of the covenant? Cite scripture.

Ans. — Circumcision. Gal 5:2 .

29. How long after the call of Abraham and the promise to him, was this?

Ans. – Paul says, “Four hundred and thirty years.” See Gal 3:17 .

XIII

THE COVENANT AT SINAI (Continued)

Scripture: Same as in preceding chapter

1. The first question is based on Exo 24:7 : “And he took the book of the covenant.” What is this book of the covenant?

Ans. All that part of Exodus 19-24-11. Moses wrote it then.

2. How may this book be regarded and what is its relation to all subsequent legislation in the Pentateuch?

Ans. You may regard the book of the covenant as a constitution and all subsequent legislation as statutes evolved from that constitution. The United States adopted a constitution of principles and the revised statutes of the United States are all evolved from the principles contained in that constitution. So that this book of the covenant may be regarded as a national constitution.

3. Why, then, is the whole of the Pentateuch called the law?

Ans. Because every part of the Pentateuch is essential to the understanding of the law. The historical part is just as necessary to the understanding of the law as any particular provision in the constitution, or any particular statute evolved from the constitution. The history must commence back at creation and go down to the passage over into the Promised Land. Very appropriately, then, do the Jews call the Pentateuch the torah, the law.

4. What other Pentateuchs?

Ans. The five books of the Psalter. When you come to study the psalms, I will show you just where each book of the psalms commences and where it ends. They are just as distinct as the five books of Moses. Another Pentateuch is the fivefold Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul; and as Moses’ Pentateuch is followed by Joshua the man of deeds, the Gospel Pentateuch is followed by Acts, which means deeds.

5. Where and when was a restatement and renewal of this covenant at Sinai?

Ans. In the book of Deuteronomy. There not only had been a breach of the covenant in the case of the golden calf, which was forgiven, but there came a more permanent breach at Kadesh-barnea when the people refused, after God brought them to the border, to go over into the Promised Land, and they wandered until all that generation died. Their children are brought where their fathers would have been brought, and it became necessary to renew that covenant. You find the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy just as you find them here.

6. State again exactly the three parts of the covenant.

Ans. (1) The Ten Commandments, or moral law (Exo 20:1-17 ); (2) the law of the altar, or the way of approach to God, in case the Ten Commandments were violated; (3) The judgments, or the civil law. Now from those three parts, the constituent elements of the covenant, are evolved everything, you might say, in all the rest of the books of the Bible. Leviticus is all evolved from the law of the altar; very much of Numbers and Deuteronomy is evolved from the civil law. Now before I consider Part I, that is, the Decalogue, I want to make a brief restatement of some things in the preceding chapter. The first is the covenant. A covenant is an agreement or compact between two or more parties with expressed stipulations showing what the two parties are to do. The parties to this Sinai covenant are: God upon the first part, and the people on the second part, with Moses as the daysman or mediator. In the preceding chapter we had the following outline:

A proposition upon God’s part for a covenant and the people’s acceptance of that proposition; A preparation for entering into that covenant; The covenant itself as expressed in three parts; The stipulations of the covenant as shown in the last chapter; The covenant ratified; The Feast of the Covenant.

Now we take up Part (1) the moral law; and we are to consider that moral law first, generally, then specifically. I can, in this chapter, get into only a part of the specifics of it.

7. What do we call Part I of this Covenant?

Ans. We call it the moral law; or, using a Greek word, the Decalogue.

8. What are the three scriptural names?

Ans. The Bible gives (1) “the ten words”; that is what “decalogue” means, “the ten words spoken.” God spake all these words. (2) “The tables” or “tablets,” whereon these words were written, and (3) “the tables of the testimony.” When this written form was deposited in the ark of the covenant, from that time on they are called “the tables of the testimony.”

9. Give the history of these tablets.

Ans. They were written on tables of stone by the finger of God; that was the original copy. Moses broke them when the people made a breach of the covenant in the matter of the golden calf. God called him up into the mountain again and rewrote these Ten Commandments; that was the second copy. Both of these God wrote. These two tables that God wrote on were deposited in the ark when it was constructed, and that, too, before they left this Mount Sinai. The last time they were seen, you learn from 1Ki 8 , was when Solomon moved that ark out of the tabernacle into the Temple which he had built. He had it opened and in there were the two tables of atone on which God had written. The probable fate of them is this, that when Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, he may have taken the ark of the covenant with the things in it as memorials of his victory, just as when Titus destroyed the Temple he took away the sacred things of the Temple; the seven-branched golden candlestick was carried in triumph into the city of Rome.

10. Divide these ten words first into grand divisions, and then into subdivisions.

Ans. The grand divisions were two tables, one of them were the commandments relating to God, i.e., man’s duty to God, and the other were the commandments expressing man’s relation to his fellowman. The subdivisions are these: all that part of Exodus from Exo 20:2-17 is divided into ten parts. Those are the subdivisions of the two tables. We will note them precisely a little further on in the comments for Exo 20:1-6 .

11. What is the Romanist method of subdivision and what are the objections thereto?

Ans. The Romanists make one out of the first two commandments, and two out of the last. We say that the First Commandment is, “Thou shall have no other gods before me,” and they say the first command is: “I am the Lord thy God which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, etc.,” to the end of the Second Commandment.

12. What other ten words and how do you compare them?

Ans. The ten words of creation and the ten Beatitudes spoken by our Lord. We compare them by a responsive reading.

13. How and where does Moses compress the ten into two?

Ans. I will give the compression. In one place Moses says, “Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” In another place Moses says, “Thou shalt love their neighbour as thyself,” compressing the first table into one and the second table into one (Deu 6:4 f; Lev 19:18 ).

14. What was the occasion of Christ’s quotation of Moses compression?

Ans. An inquirer came to him propounding this question: “Which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus, quoting Moses, says, “This is the great and first commandment, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets.”

15. What New Testament scripture shows the solidarity of the law?

Ans. The solidarity of a thing means the inability to touch any part without touching it all; and if you violate one commandment you violate all the Decalogue, and if you are guilty of one you are guilty of all. The place in the New Testament where it is said, “He that is guilty of one point in the law is guilty of all,” is Jas 2:10 . That passage expresses the solidarity of the law.

16. How does the New Testament compress the ten into one?

Ans. This passage is: “All the law is fulfilled in this one word, love,” (Gal 5:14 ).

17. Is this giving of the law, orally or in writing, the origin of the law? That is, was there no law before? Was it the origin of the law; and if not, what is it, and why is it?

Ans. This is not the origin of the law, but it is an addition. The Scriptures say, “The law was added because of trans-gression.”

18. Then, what is law?

Ans. Law is that intent or purpose in the mind of the Creator, concerning any being or thing that he causes to be. Now, the intent that he had in his mind, the purpose, when he made man, is the law of man. The intent or purpose that he had in mind when he created the tree is the law of the tree. That law may not be expressed. It inheres: it is there in the nature of the thing. It may be expressed in the spoken commandment or in the written one. But you do not have to wait until the word is spoken or till the spoken word is written in order to have law. For example, Paul says, “Death reigned from Adam to Moses.” But death is the penalty of the law, and “where there is no law there is no transgression.” Now, if law didn’t exist before given on Mount Sinai, why did those people die?

19. If the spoken or written law at Sinai was added because of transgression, show more particularly and illustrate its purpose, both negatively and positively. Now, if a law exists in God’s mind and in the nature of the things that he creates, why did he afterward speak that law and have it written?

Ans. (1) Because of transgression. We now show the mean ing of that, and illustrate it. We have the answer in this form: The purpose of speaking this law and of having it written negatively, was not to save men by it. They were lost when it was developed. But first it was to discover sin. Sin is hidden and there was a law, but it was not written or spoken. Now, God put that law in writing so that it could be held up by the side of a man, and his life, and his deeds to discover sin in him. Paul says, “I had not known sin except by the law.” (2) This sin by the law is discovered to the man in order to convict him of this sin. Paul says, ” I was alive without the law once [that is, before I knew it I felt like I was all right], but when the commandment came sin revived and I died. I saw myself to be a dead man.” In the next place, (3) it was to make the sin, which looked like something else before the man had the law, appear to be sin, as Paul says in his letter to the Romans, and also, to make it appear to be “exceedingly sinful.” Now to illustrate: Suppose on a blackboard we were to trace a zigzag turning line. That is the path a man walks; he is in the woods and thinks he is going straight, and he feels all right. Now you put a rule there, which is exactly straight, and just watch how that zigzag walk of his is sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other. The rule discovers the variations; it makes it known. Now here is (4) another purpose of the, Law: To incite to sin in order that the heinousness of the exceeding sinfulness of sin may be made manifest. Now, maybe you don’t believe that. Paul says it is so, and I can give you an illustration that will enable you to see just how it is so. I never saw one of the Baylor University boys put his foot on top of the mail box at the street corner, but if the faculty should pass a law that no boy should put his foot on that mail box, some boy’s foot would go on top of it, certainly. Now, that boy may have imagined all along that he was law abiding. But put a standard there and he wants to test it right away. I illustrate again: A little boy once saw a baldheaded man going along up the side of a hill, and the boy said, “Go up, thou bald head! Now trot out your bears.” He had been told that if he was irreverent toward an old, baldheaded man, as the boys were toward Elisha, the bears would tear him to pieces.

20. Explain carefully the Christian’s relation to this law.

Ans. It is a part of the old covenant, you say, and we have a new covenant now. Then is a Christian under obligations to keep this law? Is the law binding on you not to kill, not to lie, not to steal, not to commit adultery? We certainly would be extreme antinomians if we were to say that as an obligation that does not rest on us. It does rest on us, but it does not rest on us as a way to eternal life. You see the distinction? The time never will come when it will be right for a man to kill, to steal, to commit adultery, to covet, and no matter who does any one of these things, whether saint or sinner, it is sin. But the keeping of the Decalogue is an obligation upon the Christian because it is in the nature of his being, as when it was spoken at Sinai, yet that is not the Christian’s way to obtain eternal life.

21. What is the form of the statement of the ten words?

Ans. Negative and positive. For some of them: “Thou shalt not”; for others, positive: “Honour thy father,” etc.; but whether the form be positive or negative if it is negative, it has a positive idea attached, and if it is positive it has a negative idea. If it is an affirmation, it is also a prohibition. No matter what the form, it does prescribe certain things and it does proscribe certain things.

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Exo 19:1 In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they [into] the wilderness of Sinai.

Ver. 1. Into the wilderness of Sinai. ] A place where were many bushes and briers. Here they received the law, which, like briers and brambles, pricketh and pierceth the consciences of evil men. And this happened four hundred and thirty years after the promise made to Abraham; not to disannul the promise, Gal 3:17 but to advance it; and, that guilt being discovered, and “every mouth stopped,” Rom 3:19 we might acknowledge the riches of free grace and mercy.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

third month. App-50. Fifty days from Rameses, vii 1, 2.

children = sons.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Now in the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, in the same day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. For they were departed from Rephidim, and they were come to the desert of Sinai and they had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel encamped before the mount. And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel; You have see what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself ( Exo 19:1-4 ).

First of all God said to Moses, “Now you tell them and point out to them what I have already done for them. I have delivered them from the Egyptians. I carried them on eagles’ wings to bring them to Myself.”

Now therefore, [That’s the past, now the present, “Now therefore”,] if you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then [as far as the future] ye shall be a special treasure unto me above all of the people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation ( Exo 19:5-6 ).

Now a priest was a man who stood before God representing the people, but he also stood before the people representing God. And so being a kingdom of priests, they were to be a special people who would represent God before the world. God is looking for people to represent Him. So in a priestly kind of a ministry, in representing God before the world, Israel was to be God’s representative to the world. That was God’s desire and intention for these people that they might represent Him to the world. “A kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”

Now these are the words [God said] which you shall speak to the children of Israel. So Moses came and he called for the elders of the people, and he laid before their faces all these words which the Lord commanded him. And the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do. [What a rash promise.] And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord ( Exo 19:6-8 ).

Now at this point Moses was a priest; that is, he was going before God speaking for the people, and then he was coming to the people and speaking for God. Christ has become our great High Priest. He represents us to the Father, and He represents the Father to us. He’s our great High Priest. “So there is one mediator between God and man. The man Christ Jesus our great High Priest” ( 1Ti 2:5 ).

But Moses was the priest, and in the Old Testament this was always the purpose of the priest, to represent the people to God. To go unto God, speak for the people, and then come for the people, and speak for God. So here’s Moses operating in that whole concept of priesthood. So he goes back to God and he says, “Hey, they said they’ll buy it, everything you say, they’ll do.” “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.”

And the Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come to thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I spake with you, and believe you for ever. And Moses told the words of the people unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes ( Exo 19:9-10 ),

Now the washing of their clothes was actually just a symbolic action. The people were to really cleanse themselves before God. The washing of their clothes being a symbolic action that spoke of just the setting of themselves, or the washing of themselves of their hearts, their minds, their lives. It means to sanctify, means to set apart for, for use. So here I’m called to people to sanctify themselves, and to wash their clothes.

And be ready against the third day: for the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all of the people on mount Sinai ( Exo 19:11 ).

“So let the people sanctify themselves, really wash themselves, get themselves pure and all, because the third day’s gonna be a big day. I’m gonna come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of the people. Gonna be an awesome day.”

And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that you go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever touches the mount shall surely be put to death: And there shall not a hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet sounds long, they shall come up to the mount. And Moses went down from the mount unto the people, and he sanctified the people; and they washed their clothes. And he said unto the people, Be ready against the third day; and come not at your wives. [In other words they were to refrain from sexual relations. They were just really, set themselves aside for God, for these three days.] And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that were in the camp trembled ( Exo 19:12-16 ).

Can you imagine what that must have been when, when God began to demonstrate Himself to these people in this way? That there came down there on Mount Sinai, this smoke, there was this blasting trumpet sound, and the fire rolling around, and the lightnings and the thunders and the thick clouds.

And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. [Or away from the mountain.] And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, while the mount shook greatly ( Exo 19:17-18 ).

So the mount was shaking violently, the smoke was ascending like a furnace, and there was this great blast like a trumpet.

And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. The Lord came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go down, and charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish. And let the priests also, which come near to the Lord, sanctify themselves, lest the Lord break forth upon them ( Exo 19:19-22 ).

Now verse twenty-two indicates that perhaps some of the priests thought, “Well we don’t have to sanctify ourselves. That’s the common people.” Some of the priests apparently didn’t sanctify themselves. And in the book of Hebrews we read where some of the priests on this day died. So Moses is told to tell the priests that they’re not excluded from this.

A lot of times people think, “Well I’m so holy, you know, and I’m above the general rules. I’m some kind of-God makes some kind of a special concession for me.” But such is not the case. Verse twenty-five of Hebrews twelve, “See that you reprove not him that speaks, for if they escape not Him who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him that speaks from heaven whose voice then shook the earth.”

But now he is promising yet once more, “I’ll shake not the earth only, but heaven.” So in Hebrews referring to this, speaks of some who perished, so evidently some of the priests. “The priests also which come near to the Lord, let them sanctify themselves, lest the Lord break forth on them.”

And Moses said unto the Lord, The people cannot come up to the mount Sinai: for the people charged us saying, Set bounds about the mount, and sanctify it. And the Lord said unto him, Away, get down, and you shall come up, you, and Aaron with you: but let not the priests or the people break through to come up to the Lord, lest he break forth upon them. So Moses went down unto them, and the people, and he spake unto them ( Exo 19:23-25 ).

“

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

Here we begin the third great movement in the Book of Exodus. We have seen the people in bondage and have observed them being delivered from that bondage and guided by Jehovah. However, they were still a confused multitude rather than an organized nation. From this point to the end of the Book we have the account of the giving of the constitution and the great work of organization.

The first event was the calling of Moses and the announcement to him of the divine purpose. Jehovah first stated a simple condition to the people, “If ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant.” The promise was most remarkable. The people were to be His “peculiar treasure . . . a kingdom of priests . . . a holy nation.” This was a covenant of grace. It declared a great divine intention, but the unpreparedness of the people was shown in their easy declaration that they would keep all the words of Jehovah.

Immediately on this declaration the tone of Jehovah changed. Moses was sent back to them and the word that followed emphasized the majesty of their King. This they must ever bear in mind and maintain toward Him an attitude of such reverence as must be the outcome of an abiding sense of His power and His purity.

While in our day these ancient methods and manifestations may have ceased, the truths they were intended to indicate abide.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

Moses Receives Jehovahs Words in the Mount

Exo 19:1-15

The plain beneath Sinai, where Israel encamped, has been identified, and the reader should study the books of travelers which afford a mental conception of the scene. The brilliant colors, in which red sandstone predominates; the shattered, thunder-stricken peaks; the awful silence; the utter absence of vegetation; the level plain giving abundant opportunity for all to hear and see-all these deserve notice. The tenderness of the divine address is very touching. Nor are we excluded from these promises, if we are among Abrahams spiritual children. See Rom 4:10. If God could carry this multitude of people, He is sufficient for us and our burdens. We also may be His peculiar treasure and a kingdom of priests.

But Israels solemn pledge was a profound mistake. Had they known themselves better, they would never have made it, and one design of the Decalogue was to show how absolutely impossible it is for any to be justified by the works of the Law. Pentecost, which Whitsuntide commemorates, took place on the anniversary of this august scene.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

In the third month

At Sinai Israel learned the lessons:

(1) of the holiness of Jehovah through the Commandments;

(2) of their own sinfulness and weakness through failure;

(3) and of the goodness of Jehovah through the provision of priesthood and sacrifice. The Christian learns through the experience of Rom 7:7-24 what Israel learned at Sinai. This division of Exodus should be read in light of; Rom 3:19-27; Rom 7:7-24; Gal 4:1-3; Gal 3:6-25 explains the relation of the law to the Abrahamic Covenant:

(1) the law cannot disannul that covenant;

(2) it was “added” to convict of sin;

(3) it was a child-leader unto Christ;

(4) it was but preparatory discipline “till the Seed should come.”

third month i.e. June.

Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes

am 2513, bc 1491, An, Ex, Is, 1, Sivan

the third: Exo 12:2, Exo 12:6, Lev 23:16-18

came: Exo 16:1, Num 33:15

Reciprocal: Exo 3:12 – ye shall Exo 3:18 – that we may Lev 25:1 – General Num 1:1 – wilderness Num 10:11 – on Num 10:12 – out of the Deu 1:6 – Ye have Act 7:30 – there Act 7:36 – and in the wilderness Act 7:53 – have received

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Visions of God

Exo 19:1-25

INTRODUCTORY WORDS

1. Going forth out of Egypt. Our study for today opens with the words: “In the third month, when the Children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai.”

It is very plain to us that the wrath of Pharaoh and his armies could not keep the Children of Israel in Egypt, neither could they hinder them from going forth on their way to Canaan. Satan is powerful, but he is not all-powerful.

“The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,

He will not, He will not, desert to its foes;

That soul though all hell should endeavor to shake,

He will not, He will not, He will not forsake.”

(1) Let us consider the word “Hebrew,” The word really means “to come across.” It is suggestive of the fact that God called Abraham out of his country and: his father’s house, to take him into another country. The Children of Israel were also called to go forth out of Egypt, and to go into another land.

(2) Let us consider the word “Church.” The word means “A calling forth, a coming out.” Thus, the two words are at least similar in their suggestiveness.

God called Israel out of Egypt, just as He called Abraham out of Haran. He called the Church out of the world, just as He called both Abraham and Israel out to go into another country.

The Children of Israel were strangers, sojourning in Egypt for the while, but they were not permitted to abide there.

We, too, are strangers to this world, and we are journeying to another world.

The place of blessing is always the place of separation. God said unto Abraham, “Get thee out * * and I will bless thee.” God also says to us, “Come out from among them.” Then He adds: “And I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you.”

We would that all God’s children would personally take the place of Moses. We read that Moses “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.” We also read that he forsook Egypt. God, give us such a faith as this!

2. Coming into the wilderness. The latter part of our Scripture says they came “into the wilderness of Sinai.”

(1) Sinai stands for the place of loneliness. The Children of Israel were shut up unto God because they were shut out of the teeming multitudes that thronged the streets of Egypt.

“Alone with God, the world forbidden,

Alone with God, oh, blest retreat,

Alone with God and in Him hidden,

To hold with Him communion sweet.”

After all, it seems to us that no one can be lonely when he is having fellowship with God. Suppose the world is behind our back; suppose we are alone in a great and howling wilderness: if our loneliness shuts us up with God, and to God, we should rejoice. In His presence there is fullness of joy, and at His right hand there are pleasures forevermore.

(2) Sinai stands for the place of testing. It was there that God tested Israel to see whether she would obey Him, and whether she would follow Him fully. It was after Christ’s baptism that He was led into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, and it is, beyond doubt, after our baptism, that we are tested. We cannot successfully walk in the wilderness without walking with God. The very fact that we are in the wilderness throws us upon our Lord as nothing else could throw us.

(3) Sinai is the place of revelation. It was at Sinai that Moses and Aaron saw God in a new and more wonderful way. It was at Sinai that God said: “I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee.”

If we wish new revelations of God, we must be willing to be shut out from the world, and to walk with Him. After Saul was saved, he was led out into Arabia to be alone with God. While he was there God revealed Himself unto Saul in a marvelous way.

When we are filled with the things of this world, there is no chance to become “other-worldly.” When we are listening to the voices of the populace, there is no opportunity for us to catch the voice of God.

I. A VISION OF GOD’S FATHERHOOD (Exo 19:4)

1. “In the mount of God it shall be seen.” Exo 19:3 says, “And Moses went up unto God.” How great a privilege was this! We, too, may go up into the mountain. Our Lord delighted in doing this very thing. He even spent a whole night in the mountain alone with God.

Have you not read how we are raised and made to sit together with Him in the Heavenly places?

2. “The Lord called unto him out of the mountain.” The mountain top is the place where God will reveal Himself unto us. It is there that He shows us Himself in all the glory and beauty of His Person. If we do not have visions of God, it must be because we do not get alone with God.

3. A revelation of God’s Fatherhood. Exo 19:4 reads: “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto Myself.” In these words we plainly see the Father heart of our God. It is written, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.

In this vision of God, there are three things before us.

(1) There is the vision of His delivering care. We behold the Father destroying the powers of darkness that sought to keep back His children. It was then that Israel saw what He did unto the Egyptians for their sake.

(2) There is the vision of His protective care. We read: “And how I bare you on eagles’ wings.” It is written, “As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead Him.” The eagle stirs up her nest, not in order to endanger the life of the eaglets. She is only teaching them how to fly. So the Lord’s Father-heart taught Israel, and so He teaches us.

(3) There is the vision of His guiding hand. We read: “How I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto Myself.” The Father seeks to gather His children close up to His Father-heart.

II. A VISION OF GOD’S COVENANT-PROMISES (Exo 19:5-6)

God is speaking unto Israel through Moses, and He says: “Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My Covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people: for all the earth is Mine: and ye shall be unto Me a Kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.”

1. “Ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people.” It is not that God does not love the world, nor is it that He does not welcome all men to come unto Him. It is that those who do come, and do trust Him, and do keep His Covenant, are proclaimed a peculiar people.

This is just as true of the Church as it was of Israel. In 1Pe 2:9 we read: “Ye are * * a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.” The word “peculiar” means “particular,” “special.”

2. “Ye shall be unto Me a Kingdom of priests.” The priest is one who is set apart for special audience with the Lord, and also for special ministry to men. Thus God called Israel and blessed her in order to make her a blessing. He wanted her to be His peculiar treasure, in order that she might become His especial priest unto others.

3. “Ye shall be unto Me * * an holy nation.” They were not only to be a nation designated by their separation from all other nations of the earth, but they were to be a holy nation. All this comes home to the Church. God has called us out from among the nations, not only that we also might be a nation bound together by the ties of Heavenly love and comradeship; but a nation holy and without rebuke.

Let each one of us examine our hearts because, as Israel was, so are we also in the world. These words spoken to them are ringing in our ears. God has made a Covenant of Blood with us. It is a New Covenant which we are to keep sacred and holy before Him. If we keep this Covenant, we, too, shall be a peculiar treasure and a Kingdom of priests, and an holy nation; and thus we shall show forth the glories of our Lord unto all those among whom we move.

III. THE PEOPLE PLEDGING ALLEGIANCE TO GOD (Exo 19:7-8)

1. Face to face with God’s command. 1Pe 2:7 says, “And Moses * * laid before their faces all these words which the Lord commanded him.”

We, to whom God has given His testimony, must deliver it faithfully. We must deliver all, not a part of God’s message. We must preach the preaching which He gives us.

The people who hear must open their faces to God’s commands. To shut one’s eyes or to stop one’s ears will only lead to disobedience and its fearful fruitage. We must listen in order to do all that He commands us.

We often sing

“Face to face, with Christ my Saviour,

Face to face, what will it be?

When with rapture I behold Him,

Jesus Christ who died for me.”

Yes, that will be a glorious day; but how about beholding Him face to face now? How about praying, “Show me Thy face, O Lord; teach me Thy will, O my God”?

2. The people’s response. Here is what they said, “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” This is most refreshing. It is one thing to seek God’s will, it is another thing to know it, and still another thing to perform it.

Here is what is called “full consecration.” How many young people are now ready, without any reservation, to say, “All that the Lord hath spoken I will do”? It is written, “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” Again it is written, “Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.”

The man who is not only a promiser, but a doer of the Word of God; that is, the man who obeys, is the one whom God blesses. He is the one who builds his house on the rock.

3. The people’s words carried to the Lord. “And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord.” No doubt all our pledges of obedience and of full surrender are laid up before God. Let us do what we promise.

IV. PREPARING TO MEET GOD (Exo 19:9-12)

1. A call to sanctification. Exo 19:10 says, “Go unto the people, and sanctify them today and tomorrow.” If we are desiring to approach into the presence of God, and to dwell with Him, we must come to Him with clean hands and with pure hearts.

Our God is a holy God, and He cannot receive into His presence those who are unholy and defiled.

Listen to the Prophet Isaiah, as he warns Israel. They were seeking to appear before the Lord with their sacrifices. They were coming, however, with unwashed hearts. The Lord said to them: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil.”

Think you that the unclean can be welcomed into His holy presence? Sin has, since the day that Adam and Eve hid in the trees of the Garden, always caused men to flee the presence of God. “Be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord.”

2. A call to preparedness. Exo 19:11 says, “And be ready against the third day.” The people were about to have a vision of God. They were about to hear the Lord speaking unto Moses. They were to be made ready by the third day for that hallowed privilege.

We, too, are now in preparation against the day when we shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and “so shall we ever be with the Lord.” Certainly only the redeemed of the Lord will be there. However, the redeemed need to be robed and ready.

V. VISIONS OF THUNDERINGS AND LIGHTNINGS (Exo 19:16)

1. On the third day, in the morning. If the third day stands for resurrection, may not “the morning” stand for that dawning of the new day, when He shall come In the glory of the Father? Yes, that will be “morning”, to us. Remember, He comes as the Bright and Morning Star, and as the Sun of Righteousness rising with healing in His wings.

2. In the morning there were thunderings and lightnings. Let us read from Rev 4:1-11; “And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices.” The vision of God brings always the thunderings of His judgments. How else could God reveal Himself to a people given to sin and rebellion? Could He come as a God of love apart from His justice?

Say you that we will all draw back from before Him at His Coming? That depends on whether we have been washed in His Blood and cleansed by the washing of regeneration, by the Word.

The Holy Spirit said, through Paul, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in His body, * * whether it be good or bad.” Then the Spirit, through Paul, adds, “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.”

Remember, in Exo 19:1-25, God is about to manifest Himself, not in grace, but in Law. He is about to give His people the Ten Commandments. Therefore there are lightnings and thunders. Remember, also, that in Rev 4:1-11, and in 2Co 5:1-21, the Lord is coming as Judge to judge His people, therefore we have the “terror of the Lord.” Had not grace come by God, in the Cross of Christ, none of us had been saved.

The Law worketh wrath. The Law was a sentence of death. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. However, with all the heights and depths of the meaning of the grace that saves us, there is, in grace, no excuse for continuing in sin. All saints must live as unto the Lord, and not as unto men, “knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance * *. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons (with God).”

VI. THE VISION OF FIRE (Exo 19:18)

“And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace.”

Let us, as Christians, not relegate the “fires of God” altogether to the lake of fire and brimstone. To be sure, death and hell shall be cast into the lake of fire. However, in Exo 19:1-25 God was seen before His people, a people who had come out of Egypt by the shedding of blood.

In Heb 10:1-39 we read: “Vengeance belongeth unto Me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge His people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.”

Again we read in 1Co 3:1-23 : “If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”

The fires which had to do with the giving of the Law will never touch us under grace. Now to God’s own word in Heb 12:18-29 : “For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken unto them any more: (for they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: and so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:) * *.”

To what then are we come? We “are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the City of the Living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, and to the general assembly and Church of the Firstborn, * * and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the Blood of sprinkling (the Blood of Jesus), that speaketh better things than that of Abel.”

Thank God, then, for our sins are under the Blood that speaketh of remission, and forgiveness, and that tells us that we are free from the curse of the Law. This is ours in Christ Jesus.

However, let us remember the admonitions which close this chapter in Hebrews. For we who are saved are yet to be judged for our works-the things we have done, good or bad, since we were saved. Thus it is, that, after all the marvelous words quoted from Hebrews as above, the Holy Spirit still urges saints: “See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from Heaven.”

The Spirit of God, then, uses the history of the mountain shaken by His voice, back at the giving of the Law, and says, “But He hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also Heaven.”

What then shall we do? Here is the word of the Lord, and His plea: “Wherefore we receiving a Kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.” Why should we so serve? The answer is plain, “For our God is a consuming Fire.”

The saints shall not be judged with the wicked, but at the judgment seat of Christ. Let us therefore not use the glorious doctrine of salvation by grace, as an excuse to continue in sin.

AN ILLUSTRATION

We need a progressive vision of God. First we know Him as Creator, then as Saviour, then Lord, etc., etc.

“The point of this message is seen in the word ‘now.’ God had come to them in Egypt as Redeemer, and at Sinai as Teacher, but in Canaan He was to be their Lord, Master, Prince, Captain, and leader. This was to be the secret of Israel’s blessing and power; God as their Captain, and Joshua as only an instrument in God’s hands. * * This thought of Divine Lordship, as following sanctification, marks the true life of the believer. The Prophet Isaiah suggests this in the significant order of the two words: ‘government’ and ‘peace’ (Isa 9:7). First government, and then peace; for, of course, it is only as there is government that there can be peace; and only as Christ is our Lord, can there be any trite life for the believer. The same thing is taught in the New Testament, where, beyond all else, Christ is shown to be Lord. ‘To this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord’ (Rom 14:9). This is the meaning of the well-known phrase: ‘I believe; I belong.’ We are to accept the fact that when Christ died and rose again, He did His work for the purpose of our life being wholly given to God: and then the Holy Spirit marks us off for God by the bestowal of a new life and nature, which enable us to be what God wants.”-Griffith Thomas.

Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water

Section 1. (Exo 19:1-25; Exo 20:1-26; Exo 21:1-36; Exo 22:1-31; Exo 23:1-33; Exo 24:1-18.)

Law: the proclamation of the righteousness of a sovereign God; the people being yet unfallen. Typically, the obedience which grace enables for and makes necessary to the redeemed.

In the first section, then, we have law in its purity, -the proclamation of the righteousness of God to a people standing on the ground of legal covenant. The measure of requirement must, of course, be in conformity with this, which, save One, no man has ever satisfied. Yet in the new covenant it is said, “I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their heart” (Jer 31:33); and as so written, it becomes a “law of liberty.” Apart from any question here of the Christian rule of life -which Gal 6:16, Col 2:6, will answer -it is plain that redemption, as bringing the soul to God, sets up His throne within it, and obedience is the only liberty. It is plain, too, that there is a “righteousness of the law” which the law itself gives no power to fulfill, but which is fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.” (Rom 8:4.) What is merely dispensational passes, but not that which is the expression of God’s character, and required by it. Nothing of this can pass.

1. The people are now at Sinai. The name is nearly the same as that of the wilderness in which the manna fell, and has the same meaning. The scene is still a “wilderness,” and the throne of the almighty Lawgiver a barren mount. Law cannot bring into the land, nor produce fruit from the barren heart of man; and of this God would encompass us with reminders.

Here, then, at Sinai, He proclaims the principle of law, -obedience as the ground of blessing. He recalls to them the mighty deliverance He had accomplished for them, and the way in which He had sustained and blessed them, and brought them to Himself. And now it was in His heart for them to have them as His own, -from among all the nations, His peculiar treasure. In an earthly place, and not a heavenly, they should be to Him a kingdom of priests (with perpetual right of approach to Himself ), a nation all holy. For this He demands obedience: without it, plainly this access to Himself would be a denial of His nature.

Grace still must affirm this, therefore, not set it aside; but it does what law does not -it provides for the accomplishment of the condition. First of all, the obedience of Another, who owed none, has glorified God infinitely with regard to those who owed but did not pay. Secondly, -for this even could not release (nor could there be blessing in release) from the personal obligation, -grace apprehended in the heart brings back the heart to God, and the heart brought back in love serves of necessity.

(1) There is that which abides for us here, but the law, while it rightly claims, cannot produce it. Israel never under the law became a “kingdom of priests.” The choice of Aaron and his family afterward shows this fully. The people thus as a body were set aside from the priesthood, and it was death for any not of Aaron’s seed to invade the priestly office.

Thus the promise is one of conditional election, which of course does not touch the fact that God’s grace will at last make this good to the nation, when it is plain that in themselves they have no title.

(2) The people eagerly, and in ignorant self-confidence, accept the covenant. They have had plentiful proof of their own evil, and of their need of grace, and had been shown grace; yet, in spite of this, do not hesitate to put themselves under law: and just on this account they had to be put under law, that both they and all others through them might learn by their experience. And immediately they do learn what strict law is. The character of God’s dealing with them changes: cloud and darkness, and bounds set round the mount, enforced by the severest penalties, warn them of what law must entail upon a sinful people; the commandments themselves are made known in all the length and breadth of the divine holiness; and yet they go on, after the whole is thus declared, to ratify their engagement as confidently as they had undertaken it at first.

Apart from the legality of this, there is a truth which remains, an answer of the heart to God’s offer of love, which He seeks from us, a free-will offering of ourselves to Him (2Co 8:5). And so Barnabas exhorted the disciples, that “with purpose of heart they should cleave to the Lord.” (Act 11:23.)

(3) On the third day, (the day of manifestation) the glory of Jehovah appears upon the mount; but though this be the seal of the covenant, the people are not able to draw nigh; and the mercy of God interdicts what would be fatal to man in his sinful condition. Thus already it is plain that the issue of the covenant cannot be favorable to him.

2. The ten commandments, as spoken by Jehovah Himself in the ears of the people, are expressly said to be the “words of the covenant.” “Write thou these words,” He says to Moses, “for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel. . . . and he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.” It is very evident, therefore, that the ten commandments are not formally addressed to any other than Israel, the covenant-people.

In their form, they bear the most decisive marks of this: “I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt,” and “that thy days may be long in the land that Jehovah thy God giveth thee,” apply distinctively to Israel, as is plain. In Deu 5:15, the commandment to keep the Sabbath also is based upon their redemption out of Egypt. It is thus that the law is given to the people as a redeemed people; and this is noteworthy in two ways:

First, it reminds us that man as man is fallen, and under condemnation, and that relationship with God must be on other than natural grounds. Only in grace could God give even a law to man now, although not, of course, the full grace that is made known in the gospel. The law as the terms of the covenant was necessarily the sign, therefore, of covenant-relationship.

Secondly, we see how still “all these things happened unto them for types.” In the wisdom of God, that same law, whose principle was “do and live,” could yet be the type of the obedience of faith in those who are the subjects of a spiritual redemption, the principle of which is “live and do.” Let us remember, however, that law in itself retains none the less its character as opposed to grace, and that as a type it does not represent law any longer: we are not, as Christians, in any sense under the law, but under grace.

(1) The ten commandments divide, as our Lord has divided them, into duties Godward and manward: this being also the common division. There are four commandments in the first, and six in the second part; and so reckoned, they show the universal numerical stamp:

The first commandment plainly affirms the unity of God: it also affirms His exclusive sovereignty.

The second forbids idolatry, -the abasing Him to some creature-conception. (See Rom 1:23.)

The third requires the hallowing of His Name, -that which stands for what He really is as revealed. These three commandments thus guard the grand primary truth upon which all others rest, for faith and practice. They are different in character from the fourth, so that this last has been by some of old transferred to the second division; but in fact, this only shows that the 4 here is, as usually, a 3 + 1. The difference sustains, therefore, the numerical arrangement.

The fourth commandment here falls into its place as a memorial of creation, -man owning in it his place as a creature, yet in rest, because God rested. True, sin has broken in upon His rest, but this is not noticed here, because in the law there is covenant-relationship supposed, though only while the law is kept. But the rest is in earthly blessing, and, like all else here, never carries us beyond.

(2) We come now to the second part: here of six commandments.

The first claims honor for parents, the earth-type and representatives of the Creator-Father. And to this, as the apostle notes, a special “promise of life”-though but the continuance of it -is attached.

The second forbids killing -of course, of men: which our Lord interprets as the prohibition even of anger without cause. It is, as one may say, the salvation-ordinance of the life that is.

The third sanctions and sanctifies marriage, and how far it extends the Lord again declares.

The fourth has to do with things, not persons, -the goods of others, which it protects from the spoiler.

The fifth, under the prohibition of false witness, condemns deceit of every kind, the resource of weakness at all times where God is not before the soul. The numerical place here seems to be intended to remind the creature of his need of God, walking with whom the holiness of truth will be maintained.

The sixth and last tracks sin to its lair, discovers it in “lust,” as the apostle shows (Rom 7:7), and shows where victory over it must be found: although the secret of the victory it cannot penetrate. The law is but the “strength of sin” (1Co 15:56), and not of holiness.

In these “ten words” the measure of human responsibility is given -of man naturally. Christian responsibility we must not expect to find in it: that is measured only by our new place in Christ before God, -heavenly, so as to make us strangers and pilgrims upon the earth. Of this we have no hint here, and could not have: it would be mere confusion if introduced into it.

3. The unfitness of the people to approach God is demonstrated even to themselves, though they neither understand aright the cause nor receive the discovery aright. Ignorant of the sin which is the real barrier, and misreading, therefore, the mind of God, who would have His people with Himself, instead of seeking to have the barrier removed, they readily accept the place of distance, and beg that God may no more speak directly to them, but through Moses as the mediator. It is this spirit which would interpose the more tolerable image-worship, by which God is attempted to be brought nigh, but in reality banished. This leads, therefore, to the renewed interdiction of idolatry, while God prescribes the way in which He is to be approached. “The altar” as our Lord says, “is that which sanctifieth the gift.” Now, if we take the “gifts” that are here spoken of, the burnt-offerings and peace-offerings undoubtedly prefigure the work of Christ. The only thing, then, that could make the work of Christ acceptable was the supreme excellence of the Person who did the work. Of Him the altar of burnt-offering, -as in due time we may see, -assuredly speaks. Of Him no less must the altars here. But as the burnt-offering will be found to have also a secondary application to the believer, so it will be found in this case also.

The gift, the Lord teaches, cannot be acceptable, where the heart of him that offers it is not right. (Mat 5:23-24.) This is easily understood: and thus the type before us finds very simply its meaning in both applications, whether (as primarily) to Christ, or to the worshiper.

The material that God accepts for His altar, then, is either earth or stone, -things which are in contrast with one another; “earth,” deriving its name from its crumbling character (eretz, from ratz, to crumble, says Parkhurst of the Hebrew word); and stone, which resists pressure, and is characterized by its hardness and durability. Of the dust of the earth man was made, and as the earth is fertile as it yields to the hand that dresses it, so is man to God, as He yields Himself to the divine hand. Earth seems thus naturally to stand for the creature in its frailty, -conscious of it, and accepting the place of weakness and subjection, thus to bring forth fruit to God. While stone stands for the strength that is thus found in Another, linked with and growing out of the consciousness of weakness: “When I am weak, then am I strong.”

Now in both respects He was perfect, who came down to all the reality of manhood, to know both its weakness and the wondrous strength which is wrought out of weakness thus waiting upon and subject to God. It was thus in endurance He yielded Himself up, and endured by yielding Himself to His Father’s will. The stone of the altar no human hand might shape; and he who approached was thus warned that by no work of his own could he gain acceptance with God, or even help to do so. And again, he was not to go up by steps unto God’s altar, for steps are human machinery to reach a higher level than otherwise belongs to us. God, blessed be His name, has come down to our need, and He would have also our worship and our walk on the same level. Otherwise the effort to take a higher place will surely but expose our shame.

That there is a secondary application of these altars to the believer also seems to be true, however, and may be indicated. Our justification is as ungodly (Rom 4:5); our acceptance, in Another, wholly; yet there are acceptable conditions of soul in drawing near to God, which seem to answer to what is here. If we realize our weakness, we find, as in Hebrews, provision for it in the “High-Priest over the house of God” (Heb 10:21), and all the tenderness of divine compassion drawn out by our necessity. On the other hand, we have our unchangeable position as in Christ before God, and realize thus “the strength of our salvation.” The two things, though in contrast, yet suit well together, and we need to have them thus in counter-balance in order to know the fullness of the blessing which is ours, whether we consider what we are in ourselves, or what we are in Christ.

4. The ten commandments are in themselves a perfect rule of duty: yet the bluntness of man’s spiritual sense requires help in the application of them to practice. It has been seen thus by many commentators that the divisions of the three following chapters correspond, though not in exact order, with the commandments of the second table, and with that of the Sabbath, several of the divisions developing one of these each. Yet we must not suppose, on the other hand, a full development, which would be practically impossible, or, from its immensity, of little use, but test-cases, if we may call them so, illustrative of their application; leaving plenty of room for individual exercise, ever healthful and necessary to the discipline intended by them. This we shall see in the brief examination which it is alone possible to give them here.

“Bertheau, and after him Baumgarten, maintain,” says Murphy, “that as the ‘ten words’ constitute the great Decalogue, so each of these sections forms a minor decalogue. There is, we conceive, some tenable ground for this subdivision. This brings out in a striking light the wonderful system lying in the structure of this seemingly unconnected collection of injunctions. Seven groups of ten precepts each form the fundamental polity of the commonwealth of Israel.”

Those who see so much should look further. What is true of these chapters is true of the whole Word of God, that there is a numerical structure every where which connects all together, and gives added significance to every part. The seventh section, however, in conformity with its character, which is mainly promise, seems to be rather divisible into seven than into ten parts.

(1) “The first of these sections,” says Murphy again, “refers to the duties of masters and servants, and is therefore a natural expansion of the fifth commandment, which relates to parents and children.” This is true, and deeply instructive: how instructive is it, and yet how simple, that the master is thus seen in the place of the parent! It is of slavery the commandment treats -an evil which as yet could not be done away; and which, in the limited form in which it is here permitted, became often a benefit. How truly so if the slave became thus, as it were, the adopted child of his master, or the maid-servant became the wife of her master or of his son!

But how infinitely is the servant’s place here exalted, when we see in the One who voluntarily chooses it forever the type of the blessed Person whose “body prepared” Him was really what the digged ear of the Hebrew servant was, -the sign of love’s surrender to perpetual service! Upon all this there is no space to enlarge; but this is how God has filled up the valleys, and glorified what is lowly. Blessed be His name!

(2) The second section is, without any doubt, an expansion of the second commandment of this table. Any comment upon it would have to be in detail, and is therefore beyond the scope of the present work.

(3) The third section does not follow the order of the Decalogue, but passes on to the fourth commandment, -the question of property. This is quite suitable to the significance of the number, however; the third commandment only finding brief reference in the fourth section, which is not at all, as Murphy very strangely makes it to be, devoted to it.

(4) The fourth section, rather, as Lange says, (though with him it is a fifth, ) pronounces against unnatural crimes, sins against either the assigned place in creation or the relation to the Creator, or that which we well call “humanity,” the consideration of the need and weakness of the creature. And here the numerical stamp is evident.

(5) The fifth section plainly connects with the fifth commandment.

(6) The sixth section brings us back to the law of the Sabbath, but this only as connected with its subject, which is here to be sought certainly below the surface. On its face, it is a series of laws as to the religious seasons, and this, of course, must be the form under which we shall find the deeper truth. For deeper truth there must be: these positive outward institutions must have a purpose in the care of God for His people, as surely as they have also a typical meaning for us. Of the latter, here is not the place to speak: we find them here in connection with moral precepts, which are given for the spiritual education of the people, and

these carry their meaning upon their face: the moral purpose of the religious seasons must be as truly in them if not as evident.

Now, in general, it is plain, as we have seen, that these sections take up in order and apply the commandments of the second table, and that in this section, therefore, we should reach the last commandment, “Thou shalt not lust,” or “covet.” Can there, then, be any correspondence between that commandment, the most spiritual of all, and these merely (as it might seem) external observances?

Yet it becomes evident, as we look at what is here before us, how great a check to covetousness these ordinances would be. Every seventh day a Sabbath of rest; every seventh year sabbatic likewise; three times a year for every male to appear before the Lord, and never empty; the first-fruits to be for Him. In fact, we find that such laws were being constantly broken through by the greed and unbelief of the people. Even then they were witnesses against this. Beside which, a positive law, to which the conscience of the mass does not respond in the same way as to that which therefore they call moral, -if it require much, -tests the state of the heart more than this even. It rests more entirely for its sanction upon the authority of God; it demands more complete subjection from the will of man, which, in its revolt from God, and attracted by the world around, is lust. For those really subject, it becomes, on the other hand, a fruitful discipline.

Moreover, in this continual bringing God before the soul, and the soul to God, the true remedy is pointed out for this root and stronghold of sin within the soul. Attracted to God, the allurement of other things is met and broken, and we find true deliverance. This is what the apostle shows us in the seventh of Romans, though there in a manner beyond any thing the law could speak of.

Thus the connection of this sixth section with the sixth commandment is clearly to be seen however, and the importance of these institutions in Israel may be better realized.

(7) The seventh section is rather promise and assurance than command, although command there is also. It carries Israel’s heart on to the land of their inheritance, as ours are carried on to one more glorious.

The still smaller division of these subsections have been only indicated in the text. To have taken these up in detail would have enlarged these notes beyond their intended limit. We have before us yet much of the book, and where detail will be more required.

5. The law being now substantially complete, and when it is again, formally, accepted by the people, they are permitted to be with God as in covenant-relation. The glory of God is seen, though but afar off. It is for this reason that this manifestation of Himself does not come in its usual numerical place, but under the number which speaks of governmental dealing and human responsibility. This blessedness does not and cannot abide for them. How much can man keep of what is committed to him?

(1) And this is intimated at the outset: for the people, even in their representatives, cannot draw near. He who has come down to dwell among them has yet to hold them at a distance, while Moses alone, as type of a greater Mediator, is called to approach. This position of Moses is emphasized in Jehovah’s words here.

(2) We then find the covenant ratified, not alone by the reiterated consent of the people, but by the shedding of blood -the proclamation of the penalty of disobedience, and not the witness of the power of atonement for them. This, no doubt, seems strange and unlikely, when we read, as here, of burnt-offerings and peace-offerings offered, the well-known figures of the blessed Lord’s work for men. But when was cleansing by the blood of Jesus the result of man’s doing or engaging to do the work of the law? and this was, as Moses said to them, the blood of the covenant they were then making, that old covenant of law which is in contrast with the new covenant, and cannot be “added to” the promise of the gospel. (Gal 3:8-18.)

How, then, can the blood of the precious sacrifice be the blood of the legal covenant at the same time? For we may not say that the burnt-offering is not the blood of atonement (Lev 1:4); and we may not say that this blood atoned: how then? We have only to look at the cross of Christ, and we shall find in it the answer to this question.

Christ’s blood is the “blood of the new covenant” (Mat 26:28); but was it not also (in a sense) the blood of the old? Certainly in this way it was, that it affirmed the righteousness of the penalty of the law for those under it. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us,” says the apostle. (Gal 3:13.) And this affirms the righteousness of the penalty. Even yet, then, for every one who presumptuously undertakes to stand upon the footing of law-works before God, the blood of Christ bears witness that he must meet the penalty, which for those who are “justified by His blood” (Rom 5:9) has been met. How solemn, then, does this make the witness here!

(3) But for the moment all seems well with the people, though they are not brought nigh. But how little man thinks really of being brought nigh! how well content he is to be in the sufferable distance, if only he may escape wrath! So the representatives of the people worship in the far-off place, and all is well. And they see the God of Israel, -not as Moses, “face to face,” -nor must we speculate as to the vision. What is “under His feet” is what is dwelt on for us, -the sapphire work, like the clear transparent depths of the heavens themselves, which a comparison with Ezekiel’s vision, as well as also the language here, would seem to show as really meant: that “terrible crystal” vault, suggesting with its immeasurable depths the infinite to the finite, yet which God transcends by His whole Being: -for whom they are but the footstool for His feet. Wondrously this reveals Him whom yet we see not; for there is no likeness of Him, and they saw none (Deu 4:12). Yet we have seen Him, marvelous to say, in the likeness of the Son of Man! (Rev 1:13.)

(4) The spoken law has yet to be given into man’s hand as a written one. Such is man’s need, and so little can be trusted to tradition. In the wisdom of God the people are also to be tested by Moses’ absence from them: of this trial the forty days of absence definitely speak.

(5) The mount, covered with the cloud six days, on the seventh breaks out into flame to the people’s eyes; but the voice of the Lord calls Moses up to Himself, -to that serene Presence where cloud and fire are not. These are but as the ***** (infolding?) enfolding fire at the gate of Eden; beyond is the ineffable glory and the eternal peace.

Fuente: Grant’s Numerical Bible Notes and Commentary

PREPARATION FOR RECEIVING THE LAW

The Exodus includes two concurring elements in the moral history of the people their redemption and their renovation. It is worthy of notice that God did not give Israel the law first and then say, I will redeem you if you obey it, but that He redeemed them first and gave them the law afterwards.

THE ARRIVAL AT SINAI (Exo 19:1-2)

In the third month the same day. These words lead to the belief that the first day of the third (lunar) month is meant, just 45 days (as we can easily recall) from their departure out of Egypt. To these, quoting Bush, let us add the day on which Moses went up to God (Exo 19:3), the day after when he returned the answer of the people to God (Exo 19:7-8), and the three days more named (v. 10-11), and we have just fifty days from the Passover to the giving of the law. Hence the feast kept in later times to celebrate this event was called Pentecost, which means fiftieth day. And it is interesting that it was at this very feast the Holy Spirit was given to the disciples of Christ (Act 2:1-4) to enable them to communicate to all men to the new covenant of the Gospel.

The text of Exo 19:2 in the King James version distinguishes between the desert and the wilderness of Sinai, but there seems to be no good reason for this. Sinai denotes a particular mountain of that name, while Horeb denotes the range of which Sinai is a part. The wilderness of Sinai would seem to be the plains and wadys in its immediate neighborhood, including the mountain itself, and perhaps coextensive with the term Horeb.

THE DIVINE PRELUDE (Exo 19:3-9)

When it is said Moses went up unto God, remember the pillar of cloud in which in a sense the divine Presence abode, and which now rested doubtless on the summit of the mountain. Evidently Moses did not ascend the mountain at this time, but simply approached it.

By what two names are the people designated in Exo 19:3? Which points to their natural and which their spiritual derivation (Gen 32:23-32)?

With what three words in Exo 19:4 does God call them as witnesses to the fidelity of His promises? What beautiful figure of speech does He use expressive of His care for them? (Compare Exo 19:4 with Deu 32:11-12.) Also examine Rev 12:14, where His care for them in their coming tribulation at the end of this age is spoken of in similar terms. The parent eagle in teaching its nestlings to fly sweeps gently past them perched on the ledge of a rock, and when one, venturing to follow, begins to sink with dropping wing, she glides underneath it and bears it aloft again.

But what is expected of them as the result of this grace? And what promise is bestowed upon them in this contingency (Exo 19:5)? And how will their preciousness to God find expression in their service (Exo 19:6)?

NOTE

1.that while all the inhabitants of the earth belong to God by right of creation and general benefaction, Israel belonged to Him by special grace and covenant; that while they themselves were to be objects of priestly intercession and kingly protection they were also to be elevated into the dignity and authority of performing priestly functions and dispensing royal favors to others; and

2.that as a qualification for all this they were to be a holy nation.

THE PEOPLES PLEDGE (Exo 19:7-9)

THE PEOPLES PLEDGE (19:7-9) The elders of the people (Exo 19:7) means the leaders and principal men of the different tribes. How is the Lords command received by them (Exo 19:8)? While this is commendable, yet in the sequel how much better if they had asked Gods help to enable them to obey and to appreciate His goodness! How little they knew themselves, and how well they represent us in the earlier stages of our new experiences in Christ!

What does God now promise to Moses personally (Exo 19:9)? To what end? And why was it necessary? Had not God given evidence of His divine commission in the sign of the rod and the serpent? Yes, but this was only before the elders of the people. And had He not given evidence in the miracles of judgment upon Egypt? Yes, but many of these were not before all the people. So now they are to have a general and personal attestation which should last forever. Observe our Saviors recognition of this authority of Moses in Luk 16:31, and compare a similar recognition of His own authority in 2Pe 1:16-18.

THE PEOPLES PURIFICATION (Exo 19:10-14)

We can see the propriety of this command, but should remember that there is no virtue in external washings and other abstinences, except as they symbolize and impress us with the obligation of inner holiness and separation on the part of those who are to hold intercourse with God.

What was the Lord now about to do (Exo 19:11)? And with reference thereto what warning is promulgated (Exo 19:12)? What should happen to the man or beast overstepping these bounds (Exo 19:13)? The word it in the first clause of the verse refers to the man or beast. That is, no one should cross the bounds, even to go after it (the man or beast) to drag it back or punish it, but from a distance it should be stoned or shot. What a commentary on presumptuous sin!

Trumpet means a supernatural one to be heard from the mountain. The people were to come up to the mount in that they were to draw night to it, but no nearer than the bounds already prescribed.

THE PHENOMENA ON THE MOUNT (Exo 19:16-25)

Describe the impressive phenomena of verses 16 and 18, and their effects on the people. Never until the close of this age and the coming of our Lord will anything like this be seen or heard again. Compare 2Th 1:6-10 and the language of the Apocalypse, e.g., chapters 4 and 5.

How did God speak to Moses (Exo 19:19)? Doubtless this means by an audible and articulate form of word. What seems to have been impending on the part of the people, judging by Exo 19:21? How is Gods attention to details (if one may so say), and how is His mercy manifested here?

Who can be meant by priests in Exo 19:22 since the Aaronic priesthood was not yet instituted? The common answer is the firstborn or eldest son in every household. This seems to be suggested by the patriarchal history as one of the privileges connected with the birthright. Compare also Exo 24:5.

Who was to come up into the mountain with Moses when the latter returned (Exo 19:24)? We shall see the reason for this later when Aaron is invested with the priesthood, for it was fitting that there should be put upon him that distinction which would inspire respect for him on the part of the people.

QUESTIONS

(1)What have we learned about the day, or feast, of Pentecost?

(2)What have we learned of the priestly character of Israel?

(3)Can you quote Luk 16:31?

1.Name one or two illustrations here of Gods grace to us in Christ.

2.Have you examined the Scripture references in this lesson?

Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary

Exo 19:1. In the third month After they came out of Egypt, including the latter part of May and the former part of June. It is computed that the law was given just fifty days after their coming out of Egypt, in remembrance of which the feast of pentecost was observed the fiftieth day after the passover, and in compliance with which the Spirit was poured out upon the apostles, at the feast of pentecost, fifty days after the death of Christ.

Mount Sinai was a place which nature, not art, had made conspicuous, for it was the highest in all that range of mountains. Thus God put contempt upon cities and palaces, setting up his pavilion on the top of a mountain, in a barren desert. It is called Sinai, from the multitude of thorny bushes that overspread it.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Exo 19:1. The third month. On the fourteenth day at night the paschal lamb was slain. The two months contain sixty days, and on the fourth day of the third month the law was given, or the sixty fourth day of the Hebrew ecclesiastical year. From these we deduct the fourteen days before the passover, which leave exactly fifty days, the last of which was the day of Pentecost, a festival when the first fruits were offered, which lasted but one day. Thus a perfect type was given of the Lords descent on the holy apostles, when the day of Pentecost was fully come. Acts 2.

Exo 19:2. The desert of Sinai. This desert lay on the side of the mount, opposite to Rephidim. Hence their journey was but a short removal round the hill. The time also is noticed; it was the first day of Sivan, or of the third moon, after their departure out of Egypt, making in all forty seven days. Three days after, the law was published, agreeing in figure with the christian pentecost, or fiftieth day. What a proof that our most holy religion is built on the foundation of the law and the prophets?

Exo 19:6. A kingdom of priests, holy in body, and pure in heart. An apostle calls the christian church a royal priesthood, a consecrated generation. 1Pe 2:9. All Shems race, to the present age, affect purity. Shungee, of New Zealand, when going to murder his neighbours, was so pure that he could neither feed himself, nor enter the Mission-house.

Exo 19:15. Come not, &c. This abstinence, before sacrifice, was generally observed by the Israelites. 1Sa 21:5. Ecc 3:5. It was likewise observed by the heathens, as appears from many expressions of their poets. Vide Poli Syn. in Loc.

Exo 19:22. The priests. Some understand here the seventy elders, or presbyters, who were mostly the firstborn, and consequently priests by the rights of birth. The Levites were afterwards substituted. Num 3:12-13.

REFLECTIONS.

We are here presented with the preparations and arrangements of heaven for the promulgation of the law. The people assembled in their encampments, and approached in order. The seventy rulers stood at the foot of the mount, and the mixed multitude surrounded the skirts of the assembly.

Mark next the introductory steps which had been taken, three days before the national convocation. The Lord had given them an epitome of the blessings of the covenant, with its great condition, If ye will obey my voice. Therefore they approached with an enlightened mind to accept the covenant, and prepared to subscribe it with a willing heart. The christian is called in like manner to receive the yoke of Christ, that his soul may delight in the law of God, and find his service to be perfect freedom.

In the characteristics of the lawgiver, who says All the earth is mine; who promises the highest privileges to obedience, and who punishes transgression with death; we see displayed the Godhead of Jehovah, the Angel. Who can avoid discovering the same person, when he said, veiled in the flesh, as his glory had been obscured in the cloud: A new commandment I give unto you: and again, if ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Fathers commandments, and abide in his love. Joh 15:10. Surely this is the voice of the ratifier and guarantee of the new covenant, appointed in the hands of a Mediator.

Before the people received the law from God, and subscribed to his gracious covenant, their clothes and their persons were cleansed from every legal impurity: and the abstinence and washings of the people are figurative of that purity of heart and of purpose, with which we should draw near to God. In his presence we must lift up holy hands, without wrath or doubting. He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity in his worshippers; and he cut off the old world, because the thoughts and imaginations of their hearts were only evil continually. The dirt and filth of Egypt must be washed away in the laver of regeneration, and in the sincerest efforts to serve and please God, or he will spurn us in anger from his presence.

But although the people were now ceremonially pure, yet they were not suffered on pain of death to approach their God beyond certain limits and bounds. Moses the mediator, and Aaron the priest, were alone permitted to approach the skirts of the cloud. Thus Jesus, having exercised on earth the prophetic office, is now ascended to the throne of God to exercise for us the offices of Mediator and High Priest, after the order of Melchizedek, that in due time we may enter the holiest by his blood. In the cloud of impervious darkness, in the lightnings and thunders, in the voice of the trumpet with increasing sound, in the shaking of the mountain, and the trembling of the people, we discover the character of a holy God, covenanting with a guilty people. Ah, and more awful still shall be his wrath to punish the transgressors of his covenant, which graciously provided a sacrifice for sin. How awful the day when not only Sinai, but the whole heavens shall be enveloped in smoke and flame; when not only revolting Israel, but all nations that obey not the gospel, shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. Wherefore, knowing the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men. We entreat them to obey that voice, which then shook the earth, but now shall shake heaven also.

Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Exodus 19

We have now arrived at a most momentous point in Israel’s history. We are called to behold them standing at the foot of “the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire.” The fair millennial scene which opened before us in the preceding chapter has passed away. It was but a brief moment of sunshine in which a very vivid picture of the kingdom was afforded; but the sunshine was speedily followed by the heavy clouds which gathered around that “palpable mount,” where Israel, in a spirit of dark and senseless legality, abandoned Jehovah’s covenant of pure grace for man’s covenant of works. Disastrous movement! A movement fraught with the most dismal results. Hitherto, as we have seen, no enemy could stand before Israel – no obstacle was suffered to interrupt their onward and victorious march. Pharaoh’s hosts were overthrown – Amalek and his people were discomfited with the edge of the sword – all was victory, because God was acting on behalf of His people, in pursuance of His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

In the opening verses of the chapter now before us, the Lord recapitulates His actings toward Israel in the following touching and beautiful language: ” Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell. the children of Israel: Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and an holy nation.” (Ver. 3-6) Observe, it is “my voice” and “my covenant.” What was the utterance of that “voice?” and what did that “covenant” involve? Had Jehovah’s voice made itself heard for the purpose of laying down the rules and regulations of a severe and unbending law-giver? By no means. It had spoken to demand freedom for the captivity provide a refuge from the sword of the destroyer – to make a way for the ransomed to pass over – to bring down bread from heaven, to draw forth water out of the flinty rock. Such had been the gracious and intelligible utterances of Jehovah’s “voice,” up to the moment at which ” Israel camped before the mount.”

And as to His “covenant,” it was one of unmingled grace. It proposed no condition – it made no demands – it put no yoke on the neck – no burden on the shoulder. When “the God of glory appeared unto Abraham,” in Ur of the Chaldees, He certainly did not address him in such words as, “thou Shalt do this,” and “thou shalt not do that.” Ah! no; such language was not according to the heart of God. It suits Him far better to place “a fair mitre” upon a sinner’s head, than to “put a yoke upon his neck.” His word to Abraham was, “I WILL GIVE.” The land of Canaan was not to be purchased by man’s doings, but to be given by God’s grace. Thus it stood; and, in the opening of the book of Exodus, we see God coming down in grace to make good His promise to Abraham’s seed. The condition in which He found that seed made no difference, inasmuch as the blood of the lamb furnished Him with a perfectly righteous ground on which to make good His promise. He evidently had not promised the land of Canaan to Abraham’s seed on the ground of ought that He foresaw in them, for this would have totally destroyed the real nature of a promise. It would have made it a compact and not a promise; “but God gave it to Abraham by promise,” and not by compact. (Read Gal. 3)

Hence, in the opening of this 19th chapter, the people are reminded of the grace in which Jehovah had hitherto dealt with them; and they are also assured of what they should yet be, provided they continued to hearken to mercy’s heavenly “voice,” and to abide in the “covenant” of free and absolute grace. “Ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.” How could they be this? Was it by stumbling up the ladder of self-righteousness and legalism? Would they be “a peculiar treasure” when blasted by the curses of a broken law – a law which they had broken before ever they received it? Surely not. How then were they to be this “peculiar treasure?” By standing in that position in which Jehovah surveyed them when He compelled the covetous prophet to exclaim, “How goodly are thy tents, 0 Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel! As the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river’s side, as the trees of lign aloes which the Lord hath planted, and as cedar trees beside the waters. He shall pour the water out of his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters, and his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted. God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn.” (Num. 24: 5-8)

However, Israel was not disposed to occupy this blessed position. Instead of rejoicing in God’s “holy promise,” they undertook to make the most presumptuous vow that mortal lips could utter. “All the people answered together, and said, “All that the Lord hath, spoken we will do.” (Ex. 19: 8) This was bold language. They did not even say, “we hope to do” or “we will endeavour to do.” This would have expressed a measure of self-distrust. But no; they took the most absolute ground. “We will do.” Nor was this the language of a few vain, self-confident spirits who presumed to single themselves out from the whole congregation. No; “all the people answered together.” They were unanimous in the abandonment of the holy promise” – the “holy covenant.”

And now, observe the result. The moment Israel uttered their “singular vow,” the moment they undertook to “do,” there was a total alteration in the aspect of things. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud. . . . . And thou shalt set bounds unto the people, round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount, shall be surely put to death.” This was a very marked change; the One who had just said, “I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself,” now envelopes Himself “in a thick cloud,” and says, “set bounds unto the people round about.” The sweet accents of grace and mercy are exchanged for the “thunderings and lightnings” of the fiery mount. Man had presumed to talk of his miserable doings in the presence of God’s magnificent grace. Israel had said, “we will do,” and they must be put at a distance in order that it may be fully seen what they are able to do. God takes the place of moral distance; and the people are but too well disposed to have it so, for they are filled with fear and trembling; and no marvel, for the sight was “terrible,” – “so terrible that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake.” Who could endure the sight of that “devouring fire,” which was the apt expression of divine holiness? “The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints; from his right hand went a fiery law for them.” (Deut. 33: 2) The term “fiery,” as applied to the law, is expressive of its holiness: “Our God is a consuming fire,” – perfectly intolerant of evil, in thought, word, and deed.

Thus, then, Israel made a fatal mistake in saying, “we will do.” It was taking upon themselves a vow which they were not able, even were they willing, to pay; and we know who has said, “better that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.” It is of the very essence of a vow that it assumes the competency to fulfil; and where is man’s competency? As well might a bankrupt draw a cheque on the bank, as a helpless sinner make a vow. A man who makes a vow, denies the truth, as to his nature and condition. He is ruined, what can he do? He is utterly without strength, and can neither will nor do anything good. Did Israel keep their vow Did they do “all that the Lord commanded?” Witness the golden calf, the broken tables, the desecrated Sabbath, the despised and neglected ordinances, the stoned messengers, the rejected and crucified Christ, the resisted Spirit. Such are the overwhelming evidences of mans dishonoured vows. Thus must it ever be when fallen humanity undertakes to vow.

Christian reader, do you not rejoice in the fact that your eternal salvation rests not an your poor shadowy vows and resolutions, but on “the one offering of Jesus Christ once?” Oh, yes, “this is our joy, which never can fail.” Christ has taken all our vows upon Himself, and gloriously discharged them for ever. His resurrection-life flows through His members and produces in them results which legal vows and legal claims never could effect. He is our life, and He is our righteousness. May his name be precious to our hearts. May His cause ever command our energies. May it be our meat and our drink to spend and be spent in His dear service.

I cannot close this chapter without noticing, in connection, a passage in the Book of Deuteronomy, which may present a difficulty to some minds. It has direct reference to the subject on which we have been dwelling. “And the Lord heard the voice of your words, when ye spake unto me; and the Lord said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee: they have well said all that they have spoken. (Deut. 5: 28) From this passage it might seem as though the Lord approved of their making a vow; but if my reader will take the trouble of reading the entire context, from ver. 24-27, he will see at once that it has nothing whatever to say to the vow, but that it contains the expression of their terror at the consequences of their vow. They were not able to endure that which was commanded. “If,” said they, “we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, then we shall die. For who is there of all flesh that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived! Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say; and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it and do it.” It was the confession of their own inability to encounter Jehovah in that awful aspect which their proud legality had led Him to assume. It is impossible that the Lord could ever commend an abandonment of free and changeless grace for a sandy foundation of “works of law.”

Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch

Exodus 19. Awful Revelation of God in Fire and Cloud. Exo 19:1-2 a P, Exo 19:2 b Exo 19:3 a E, Exo 19:3 b Exo 19:6 Rd, Exo 19:7-11 a E, Exo 19:11 b Exo 19:13 J, Exo 19:14-17 E, Exo 19:18 J, Exo 19:19 E, Exo 19:20-22 J, Exo 19:23 Rje, Exo 19:24 f. J.This highly composite chapter will be most easily followed if the component sources are taken separately. From P we have only the note of the arrival at Sinai. The order of clauses should be: Exo 19:2 a, And they took their journey (Exo 16:1) from Rephidim and came to . . . Sinai, and pitched in the wilderness; 1, in the third month came they . . . From E also we learn of the pitching of the camp, and that Moses went up unto God. But the very beautiful passage which follows (Exo 19:3 b Exo 19:6) was probably written for another context: it would well follow Joshua 24. It comes from a disciple of the prophets, and describes Gods redemptive care and His pride of possession of His people (cf. Tit 2:14, 1Pe 2:9), Gods priest-nation on earth (cf. Isa 61:6), and so called to be holy (Rom 1:7). Displaced, perhaps from after Exo 20:17, Exo 19:7 f. has found lodgment here. Then in Exo 19:9-11 a the promise is given of an interview with Moses in a thick cloud within hearing of the people, who must guard their persons for two days from defilement and wash their clothes (Gen 35:2*). Then Exo 19:14-17, after relating the preparations, describes the descent of the thunder-cloud, lightning flashing forth from it, and a supernatural trumpet (cf. 1Co 15:52) booming out its summons. The trembling people are led out to meet God. We leave them there, standing at the foot of the mount (see next Exo 20:18-21), and turn to Js parallel. Restoring what seems clearly the right order, we have a picture (in Exo 19:20 a, Exo 19:18, Exo 19:20 b) of the mountain flaming and smoking like a furnace on the descent of Yahweh (cf. Exo 14:21 f.*) in an earthquake (contrast 1Ki 19:11, where the still small voice marks a yet higher species of revelation). Then in the present text, after Moses has been called up to the top of the mount (Exo 19:20), he is immediately sent down again (Exo 19:21; Exo 19:24 a, to down) merely to give directions to prevent the people profaning the sacred mount by coming too near, while Exo 19:11 b Exo 19:13 tells of his obedience, and ends: when the rams horn soundeth long, they (emphatic these, i.e. the priests of Exo 19:22) shall come up to the mount. After Exo 19:23 (an obvious gloss), Exo 19:24 b Exo 19:25 summons Moses, with Aaron but no one else, though some render, Come up, thou and Aaron with thee and the priests; but . . ., and ends, And Moses went down unto the people, and said unto them. The sequel is Exo 34:1 ff., and it has been suggested that the stringent regulations against sacrilege reflect a later stage of feeling, and may have been added to the original. On the other hand, the injunctions may merely rest upon the idea of taboo, which is of great antiquity. The allusion to priests shows that J took them as a matter of course, like altars and sacrifices (yet see Exo 32:29*, and cf. p. 106). P does not recognise priests till Leviticus 8. It is important, in conclusion, to note that, while God uses natural occurrences, which are among the lower manifestations of His being and power, as channels for arousing men to a sense of things unseen, His messages can be received only by one whose mind and conscience and heart are attuned to the right pitch.

[Exo 19:22. The presence of Yahweh is so dangerous that even the priests, whose function it is to approach Him, him have to sanctify themselves (Gen 35:2*) as a precaution against His breaking out upon them. He reacts against ritual uncleanness, almost automatically. For this barely ethical idea we might compare the attack on Moses at the inn (Exo 4:24-26) or the smiting of the men of Beth-shemesh (1Sa 6:19) and of Uzzah (2Sa 6:6 f.).A. S. P.]

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

A CONDITIONAL PROMISE

(vs.1-6)

Chapter 19 begins the second great division of the book of Exodus. God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt has been fully accomplished though they are still in the wilderness. He had carried out His unconditional promise in this great deliverance. But now He makes a promise that is conditional on their obedience. This did not infringe on His first promise, but it is typical of God’s authority being established among a redeemed people. Since they are redeemed to Him, they are responsible to Him, just as is true of believers today. Not that we today are put under law: we are not. Law has no authority over us, but nevertheless, the Lord Jesus does have authority over us, and if we ignore His authority we can expect present serious consequences, though our eternal salvation if not affected by this.

In the third month after leaving Egypt, Israel came to Mount Sinai. Moses went up into the mountain, where God called to him (v.3), giving him a message for Israel. This began with a reminder that Israel had witnessed God’s judgment of the Egyptians and His bringing Israel by miraculous power (symbolized by eagles’ wings) to Himself (v.4).

Being the recipients of such marvelous grace from God, Israel was surely responsible to Him. God therefore addresses them on the basis of their responsibility. If they would obey God’s voice and would keep the covenant that God was now establishing with them, then they would be His special treasure above all the nations (v.5) and “a kingdom of priests,” a holy nation, that is, sanctified above all others.

A THICK CLOUD, THUNDER AND LIGHTNING

(vs.7-25)

When Moses brought God’s message to the children of Israel, then “all the people answered and said, All that the Lord has spoken we will do”(v.8). They made this promise before having heard what God required of them. How little they knew their own hearts! Moses returned their answer to the Lord (v.8).

What was the result of this? did God express His approval and appreciation of their promise? Far from it! Rather, He told Moses, “Behold, I come to you in the thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and believe you forever” (v.9). Rather than the people speaking (making a promise) and God believing them, God would speak, and the people had better believe Moses, who would convey God’s word to them. Thus, they were to believe God.

Apparently Moses told the people’s words to the Lord a second time (v.9), probably to remind Him that the people did believe because they had made such a strong promise. But Moses needed to be taught also that God was not seeking a promise from them, but submission of heart. A promise by sinners really indicates confidence in the flesh, and is always soon broken: a heart humbled before God indicates that the flesh is judged.

Therefore the Lord tells Moses to go to the people and consecrate (or sanctify) them for two days and let them wash their clothes (v.10). In other words, in their natural condition they were not to meet a God of absolute holiness. Sanctifying is setting them apart from the evil natural to them. Also, their clothes, speaking of their habits, were defiled, just as we too require washing from defiling habits. On the third day God Himself would come down on Mount Sinai to manifest Himself in a certain way. that manifestation was not in grace, however, as it is today in the person of Christ, “God manifest in flesh.”

In fact, this manifestation of God in Christ is most wonderful in the fact that God comes near and brings us near to Himself. But the manifestation of Exo 19:1-25 keeps the people at a distance. Bounds were to be set around the mountain (v.12) with the solemn threat of death to anyone who dared to even touch the base of the mountain. Even beasts were included in this prohibition (v.13). When the trumpet sounded long, they were to come near to the mountain, but no further, just near enough to be filled with awe and apprehension.

Moses brought this word to the people, so that they were sanctified and washed their clothes (v.14), and he told them to be ready for the third day, maintaining a sanctification even from a sexual relationship with their wives. Yet even these preparations did not take the edge off the stern, forbidding character of the manifestation of God in awe inspiring justice.

For on the third day there were thunderings and lightings and a thick cloud on the mountain, then a trumpet sounding extremely loud, causing the people to tremble (v.16). Yet Moses did not allow them to draw back, but brought them near to the foot of the mountain, to meet with a God who was really hidden behind the forbidding cloud. Added to the thunder and lightning and the thick cloud, was fire and smoke and a great earthquake (v.18). Thus God met their promise to obey Him!

Along with other awe-inspiring manifestations, the blast of the trumpet not only continued long, but became louder and louder. This simply implies that God was speaking to Israel so loudly as to totally silence any speaking on Israel’s part, whether in promise or whatever else. The trumpet was intended as an announcement to be heard by everyone. In this case God was announcing the giving of the law, that which was to be placed as a stern exaction on the nation Israel. From the very outset God was indicating that He knew the law was a yoke of bondage that Israel would not be able to bear. Yet in spite of these awesome tokens, Israel still did not understand this lesson of their inability to keep the law.

Moses spoke and God answered by a voice, calling him to come to the top of the mountain to which God had come down. In what way His presence was manifest there we do not know, but immediately again the Lord sent Moses back down to solemnly charge the people not to dare to break through the bounds around the mountain, to see what they could, and therefore die (v.21) Also, as to the priests, who evidently were allowed to come closer, they must sanctify themselves from all defilement, or suffer judgment from the Lord.

Moses protested to the Lord that the people were not able to come up to the mountain because he had obeyed the Lord in setting bounds around the mountain beyond which the people were not allowed to go. But God knew the people better than Moses did. Setting bounds for them was no guarantee that they would observe those bounds, just as the law of God sets definite restrictions, but man’s boldly rebellious nature does not hesitate to break over every such barrier.

Therefore God speaks sharply to Moses, “Away! Get down.” He must give an extra solemn warning to Israel to restrain their fleshly impatience which they were told would issue in their own death. Moses and Aaron were then told to come up, where they heard from God the ten commandments (ch.20) and many attendant regulations and ordinances given in chapters 21-23. After that Moses went down to the people (ch.24:3), and later returned, not with Aaron, but Joshua (ch.24:12-13), and was there forty days, until the history recounted in chapter 32.

Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible

19:1 In the {a} third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same {b} day came they [into] the wilderness of Sinai.

(a) Which was in the beginning of the month of Sivan, containing part of May and part of June.

(b) That they departed from Rephidim.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

B. The establishment of the Mosaic Covenant 19:1-24:11

The Lord had liberated Israel from bondage in Egypt, but now He adopted the nation into a special relationship with Himself.

"Now begins the most sublime section in the whole Book. The theme of this section is supremely significant, playing a role of decisive importance in the history of Israel and of humanity as a whole." [Note: Cassuto, p. 223.]

At Sinai, Israel received the law and the tabernacle. The law facilitated the obedience of God’s redeemed people, and the tabernacle facilitated their worship. Thus the law and the tabernacle deal with the two major expressions of the faith of the people redeemed by the grace and power of God: obedience and worship.

Here begins the fifth dispensation, the dispensation of the law. It ended with the death of Christ, who alone fulfilled all its requirements and, as a second Moses, superceded it with His own teaching. God gave the Israelites the law "because of [their] transgressions" (Gal 3:19), which we have seen they committed after their redemption. The law taught the wayward Israelites, and teaches all readers of this history, the awesome holiness of God (Exo 19:10-25) and the exceeding sinfulness of man (Rom 7:13; 1Ti 1:8-10). It also taught and teaches the necessity of obedience (Jer 7:23-24), the universality of human failure (Rom 3:19-20; Rom 3:23), and the marvel of God’s grace that provided a way whereby redeemed sinners could have ongoing relationship with God (Rom 3:21-22).

The law did not change the provisions or abrogate the promises that God gave in the Abrahamic Covenant. God did not give it as a means of justification for unbelievers (Act 15:10-11; Gal 2:16; Gal 2:21; Gal 3:3-9; Gal 3:14; Gal 3:17; Gal 3:24-25) but as a means of sanctification, rules for living, for a redeemed people. It clarified for them that purity and holiness should characterize their lives as the people of God. It was "child training" through disciplinary restriction and correction designed to prepare them for the coming of Christ when they as a people would "come of age" (Deu 6:24; Gal 3:24; Gal 3:26; Gal 4:1-7; Tit 2:11-13). The Israelites, however, misinterpreted the purpose of the law and sought to obtain righteousness by their good deeds and ceremonial ordinances (Act 15:1; Rom 9:31 to Rom 10:3; 1Ti 1:8-10). Israel’s history was one long record of violating the law, even to rejecting their own Messiah whom Moses told them to heed (Deu 18:15).

The Mosaic Covenant is an outgrowth of the Abrahamic Covenant in the sense that it was a significant, intimate agreement between God and Abraham’s descendants. By observing it the Israelites could achieve their purpose as a nation. This purpose was to experience God’s blessing and to be a blessing to all nations of the earth (Gen 12:2). In contrast to the Abrahamic Covenant, Israel had responsibilities to fulfill to obtain God’s promised blessings (Exo 19:5). It was, therefore, a conditional covenant. The Abrahamic Covenant-as well as the Davidic and New Covenants that contain expansions of the promises in the Abrahamic Covenant-was unconditional.

A further contrast is this.

"Whereas the Sinaitic covenant was based on an already accomplished act of grace and issued in stringent stipulations, the patriarchal covenant rested only on the divine promise and demanded of the worshipper only his trust (e.g., ch. Exo 15:6)." [Note: Bright, pp. 91-92.]

"The covenant with Israel at Sinai is to bring Israel into a position of mediatorial service." [Note: Eugene H. Merrill, "The Mosaic Covenant: A Proposal for Its Theological Significance," Exegesis and Exposition 3:1 (Fall 1988):29.]

"The major difference between the Mosaic covenant and the Abrahamic covenant is that the former was conditional and also was ad interim, that is, it was a covenant for a limited period, beginning with Moses and ending with Christ. . . .

"In contrast to the other covenants, the Mosaic covenant, though it had provisions for grace and forgiveness, nevertheless builds on the idea that obedience to God is necessary for blessing. While this to some extent is true in every dispensation, the Mosaic covenant was basically a works covenant rather than a grace covenant. The works principle, however, was limited to the matter of blessing in this life and was not related at all to the question of salvation for eternity." [Note: John F. Walvoord, "The New Covenant," in Integrity of Heart, Skillfulness of Hands, pp. 191-92.]

The Mosaic Covenant is the heart of the Pentateuch.

"First, it should be pointed out that the most prominent event and the most far-reaching theme in the Pentateuch, viewed entirely on its own, is the covenant between Yahweh and Israel established at Mount Sinai. . . .

"1) The author of the Pentateuch wants to draw a connecting link between God’s original plan of blessing for mankind and his establishment of the covenant with Israel at Sinai. Put simply, the author sees the covenant at Sinai as God’s plan to restore his blessing to mankind through the descendants of Abraham (Gen 12:1-3; Exo 2:24).

"2) The author of the Pentateuch wants to show that the Covenant at Sinai failed to restore God’s blessing to mankind because Israel failed to trust God and obey his will.

"3) The author of the Pentateuch wants to show that God’s promise to restore the blessing would ultimately succeed because God himself would one day give to Israel a heart to trust and obey God (Deu 30:1-10)." [Note: John H. Sailhamer, "Exegetical Notes: Genesis 1:1-2:4a," Trinity Journal 5 NS (Spring 1984):75, 76.]

The writer interrupted the narrative sections of Exodus with blocks of other explanatory, qualifying, and cultic material in the chapters that follow. [Note: Durham, p. 258.]

Another scholar observed the following chiastic structure in chapters 19-24. [Note: Joe M. Sprinkle, "Law and Narrative in Exodus 19-24," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 47:2 (June 2004):242.]

A    Narrative: the covenant offered (Exo 19:3-25)

B    Law: the Decalogue (Exo 20:1-17)

C    Narrative: the people’s fear (Exo 20:18-21)

B’    Law: the Book of the Covenant (Exo 20:22 to Exo 23:33)

A’    Narrative: the covenant accepted (Exo 24:1-11)

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

The Israelites arrived at the base of the mountain where God gave them the law about three months after they had left Egypt, in May-June (Exo 19:1). The mountain in the Sinai range that most scholars have regarded as the mountain peak referred to in this chapter stands in the southeastern part of the Sinai Peninsula. Its name in Arabic is Jebel Musa, mountain of Moses. [Note: See Israel Finkelstein, "Raider of the Lost Mountain-An Israeli Looks at the Most Recent Attempt to Locate Mt. Sinai," Biblical Archaeology Review 15:4 (July-August 1988):46-50.] There is a natural slope to the land to the southeast of this peak, and another plain to the north, which would have afforded Israel a good view of the mountain if the people camped there. However the location of biblical Mt. Sinai continues to be uncertain. The nation stayed at Mt. Sinai 11 months (Num 10:11). The record of their experiences here continues through Num 10:10.

Many reliable scholars have considered Exo 19:3-6 the very heart of the Pentateuch because they contain the classic expression of the nature and purpose of the theocratic covenant that God made with Israel, the Mosaic Covenant.

God gave the Mosaic Law specifically "to the house of Jacob . . . the sons of Israel" (Exo 19:3). [Note: For an illustration of the confusion that failure to observe this fact can create in teaching on the Christian’s relationship to the Law, see Sakae Kubo, "Why then the Law?" Ministry (March 1980), pp. 12-14.]

"The image of the eagle [Exo 19:4] is based on the fact that the eagle, when its offspring learns [sic] to fly, will catch them on its wings when they fall." [Note: Gispen, p. 179.]

"Without doubt Exo 19:4-6 is the most theologically significant text in the book of Exodus, for it is the linchpin between the patriarchal promises of the sonship of Israel and the Sinaitic Covenant whereby Israel became the servant nation of Yahweh." [Note: Merrill, "A Theology . . .," p. 32. Cf. William J. Dumbrell, Covenant and Creation, pp. 80-81.]

God’s promise to Israel here (Exo 19:5-6) went beyond what He had promised Abraham. If Israel would be obedient to God, He would do three things for the nation (cf. Jos 24:15).

1. Israel would become God’s special treasure (Exo 19:5). This means that Israel would enjoy a unique relationship with God compared with all other nations. This was not due to any special goodness in Israel but strictly to the sovereign choice of God.

2. Israel would become a kingdom of priests (Exo 19:6). This is the first occurrence in Scripture of the word "kingdom" as referring to God’s rule through men on earth. A priest stands between God and people. Israel could become a nation of mediators standing between God and the other nations, responsible for bringing them to God and God to them. Israel would not be a kingdom run by politicians depending on strength and wit but by priests depending on faith in Yahweh: a servant nation rather than a ruling nation. [Note: Durham, p. 263.]

3. Israel would become a holy nation (Exo 19:6). "Holy" means set apart and therefore different. The Israelites would become different from other peoples because they would devote themselves to God and separate from sin and defilement as they obeyed the law of God. In these notes I have capitalized "Law" when referring to the Pentateuch, the Law of Moses, or the Ten Commandments and have used the lowercase "law" for all other references to law.

In short, Israel could have become a testimony to the whole world of how glorious it can be to live under the government of God. The people experienced these blessings only partially because their obedience was partial. Israel’s disobedience to the Mosaic Covenant did not invalidate any of God’s promises to Abraham, however. Those promises did not rest on Israel’s obedience, as these did (cf. Gen 15:17-21 and Exo 19:5-6). [Note: See Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, "Israel and the Church," in Issues in Dispensationalism, pp. 113-15, for a good discussion of Israel’s national election and how this relates to the individual election of Israelites.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

CHAPTER XIX.

AT SINAI.

Exo 19:1-25.

In the third month from the Exodus, and on the selfsame day (which addition fixes the date precisely), the people reached the wilderness of Sinai. This answers fairly to the date of Pentecost, which was afterwards connected by tradition with the giving of the law. And therefore Pentecost was the right time for the gift of the Holy Ghost, bringing with Him the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and that freedom from servile Jewish obedience which is not attained by violating law, but by being imbued in its spirit, by the love which is the fulfilling of the law.

* * * * *

There is among the solemn solitudes of Sinai a wide amphitheatre, reached by two converging valleys, and confronted by an enormous perpendicular cliff, the Ras Sufsafeh–a “natural altar,” before which the nation had room to congregate, awed by the stern magnificence of the approach, and by the intense loneliness and desolation of the surrounding scene, and thus prepared for the unparalleled revelation which awaited them.

It is the manner of God to speak through nature and the senses to the soul. We cannot imagine the youth of the Baptist spent in Nazareth, nor of Jesus in the desert. Elijah, too, was led into the wilderness to receive the vision of God, and the agony of Jesus was endured at night, and secluded by the olives from the paschal moon. It is by another application of the same principle that the settled Jewish worship was bright with music and splendid with gold and purple; and the notion that the sublime and beautiful in nature and art cannot awaken the feelings to which religion appeals, is as shallow as the notion that when these feelings are awakened all is won.

What happens next is a protest against this latter extreme. Awe is one thing: the submission of the will is another. And therefore Moses was stopped when about to ascend the mountain, there to keep the solemn appointment that was made when God said, “This shall be the token unto thee that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain” (Exo 3:12). His own sense of the greatness of the crisis perhaps needed to be deepened. Certainly the nation had to be pledged, induced to make a deliberate choice, now first, as often again, under Joshua and Samuel, and when Elijah invoked Jehovah upon Carmel. (Jos 24:24; 1Sa 12:14; 1Ki 18:21, 1Ki 18:39.)

It is easy to speak of pledges and formal declarations lightly, but they have their warrant in many such Scriptural analogies, nor should we easily find a church, careful to deal with souls, which has not employed them in some form, whether after the Anglican and Lutheran fashion, by confirmation, or in the less formal methods of other Protestant communions, or even by delaying baptism itself until it becomes, for the adult in Christian lands, what it is to the convert from false creeds.

Therefore the Lord called to Moses as he climbed the steep, and offered through him a formal covenant to the people.

“Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob,[33] and tell the children of Israel: Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto Myself.”

The appeal is to their personal experience and their gratitude: will this be enough? will they accept His yoke, as every convert must, not knowing what it may involve, not yet having His demands specified and His commandments before their eyes, content to believe that whatever is required of them will be good, because the requirement is from God? Thus did Abraham, who went forth, not knowing whither, but knowing that he was divinely guided. “Now, therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me from among all peoples; for all the earth is Mine, and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

Thus God conveys to them, more explicitly than hitherto, the fact that He is the universal Lord, not ruling one land or nation only, nor, as the Pentateuch is charged with teaching, their tutelary deity among many others. Thus also the seeds are sown in them of a wholesome and rational self-respect, such as the Psalmist felt, who asked “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?” yet realised that such mindfulness gave to man a real dignity, made him but little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honour.

Abolish religion, and mankind will divide into two classes,–one in which vanity, unchecked by any spiritual superior, will obey no restraints of law, and another of which the conscious pettiness will aspire to no dignity of holiness, and shrink from no dishonour of sin. It is only the presence of a loving God which can unite in us the sense of humility and greatness, as having nothing and yet possessing all things, and valued by God as His “peculiar treasure.”[34]

And with a reasonable self-respect should come a noble and yet sober dignity–“Ye shall be a kingdom of priests,” a dynasty (for such is the meaning) of persons invested with royal and also with priestly rank. This was spoken just before the law gave the priesthood into the hands of one tribe; and thus we learn that Levi and Aaron were not to supplant the nation, but to represent it.

Now, this double rank is the property of redeemed humanity: we are “a kingdom and priests unto God.” Yet the laity of the Corinthian Church were rebuked for a self-asserting and mutinous enjoyment of their rank: “Ye have reigned as kings without us”; and others there were in this Christian dispensation who “perished in the gainsaying of Korah” (1Co 4:8; Jud 1:11).

If the words “He hath made us a kingdom and priests” furnish any argument against the existence of an ordained ministry now, then there should have been no Jewish priesthood, for the same words are here. And is it supposed that this assertion only began to be true when the apostles died? Certainly there is a kind of self-assertion in the ministry which they condemn. But if they are opposed to its existence, alas for the Pastoral Epistles! It was because the function belonged to all, that no man might arrogate it who was not commissioned to act on behalf of all.

But while the individual may not assert himself to the unsettling of church order, the privilege is still common property. All believers have boldness to enter into the holiest place of all. All are called upon to rule for God “over a few things,” to establish a kingdom of God within, and thus to receive a crown of life, and to sit with Jesus upon His throne. The very honours by which Israel was drawn to God are offered to us all, as it is written, “We are the circumcision,” “We are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise” (Php 3:3; Gal 3:29).

To this appeal the nation responded gladly. They could feel that indeed they had been sustained by God as the eagle bears her young–not grasping them in her claws, like other birds, but as if enthroned between her wings, and sheltered by her body, which interposed between the young and any arrow of the hunter. Thus, say the Rabbinical interpreters, did the pillar of cloud intervene between Israel and the Egyptians. If the image were to be pressed so far, we could now find a much closer analogy for the eagle “preferring itself to be pierced rather than to witness the death of its young” (Kalisch). But far more tender, and very touching in its domestic homeliness, is the metaphor of Him Whose discourses teem with allusions to the Old Testament, yet Who preferred to compare Himself to a hen gathering her chickens under her wing.

With the adhesion of Israel to the covenant, Moses returned to God. And the Lord said, “Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and may also believe thee for ever.”

The design was to deepen their reverence for the Lawgiver Whose law they should now receive; to express by lessons, not more dreadful than the plagues of Egypt, but more vivid and sublime, the tremendous grandeur of Him Who was making a covenant with them, Who had borne them on His wings and called them His firstborn Son, Whom therefore they might be tempted to approach with undue familiarity, were it not for the mountain that burned up to heaven, the voice of the trumpet waxing louder and louder, and the Appearance so fearful that Moses said, “I exceedingly fear and quake” (to phantazomenon– Heb 12:21).

When thus the Deity became terrible, the envoy would be honoured also.

But it is important to observe that these terrible manifestations were to cease. Like the impressions produced by sickness, by sudden deaths, by our own imminent danger, the emotion would subside, but the conviction should remain: they should believe Moses for ever. Emotions are like the swellings of the Nile: they subside again; but they ought to leave a fertilising deposit behind.

That the impression might not be altogether passive, and therefore ephemeral, the people were bidden to “sanctify themselves”; all that is common and secular must be suspended for awhile; and it is worth notice that, as when the family of Jacob put away their strange gods, so now the Israelites must wash their clothes (cf. Gen 35:2). For one’s vestment is a kind of outer self, and has been with the man in the old occupations from which he desires to purify himself. It was therefore that when Jehu was made king, and when Jesus entered Jerusalem in triumph, men put their garments under their chief to express their own subjection (2Ki 9:13; Mat 21:7). Much of the philosophy of Carlyle is latent in these ancient laws and usages.

Moreover, the mountain was to be fenced from the risk of profanation by any sudden impulsive movement of the crowd, and even a beast that touched it should be slain by such weapons as men could hurl without themselves pursuing it. Only when the trumpet blew a long summons might the appointed ones come up to the mount (Exo 19:13).

On the third day, after a soul-searching interval, there were thunders and lightnings, and a cloud, and the trumpet blast; and while all the people trembled, Moses led them forth to meet with God. Again the narrative reverts to the terrible phenomena–the fire like the smoke of a furnace (called by an Egyptian name which only occurs in the Pentateuch), and the whole mountain quaking. Then, since his commission was now to be established, Moses spake, and the Lord answered him with a voice. And when he again climbed the mountain, it became necessary to send him back with yet another warning, whether his example was in danger of emboldening others to exercise their newly given priesthood, or the very excess of terror exercised its well-known fascinating power, as men in a burning ship have been seen to leap into the flames.

And the priests also, who come near to God, should sanctify themselves. It has been asked who these were, since the Levitical institutions were still non-existent (Exo 19:22-24). But it is certain that the heads of houses exercised priestly functions; and it is not impossible that the elders of Israel who came to eat before God with Jethro (Exo 18:12) had begun to perform religious functions for the people. Is it supposed that the nation had gone without religious services for three months?

It has been remarked by many that the law of Moses appealed for acceptance to popular and even democratic sanctions. The covenant was ratified by a plebiscite. The tremendous evidence was offered equally to all. For, said St. Augustine, “as it was fit that the law which was given, not to one man or a few enlightened people, but to the whole of a populous nation, should be accompanied by awe-inspiring signs, great marvels were wrought … before the people” (De Civ. Dei, x. 13).

We have also to observe the contrast between the appearance of God on Sinai and His manifestation in Jesus. And this also was strongly wrought out by an ancient father, who represented the Virgin Mary, in the act of giving Jesus into the hands of Simeon, as saying, “The blast of the trumpet does not now terrify those who approach, nor a second time does the mountain, all on fire, cause terror to those who come nigh, nor does the law punish relentlessly those who would boldly touch. What is present here speaks of love to man; what is apparent, of the Divine compassion.” (Methodius De Sym. et Anna, vii.)

But we must remember that the Epistle to the Hebrews regards the second manifestation as the more solemn of the two, for this very reason: that we have not come to a burning mountain, or to mortal penalties for carnal irreverence, but to the spiritual mountain Zion, to countless angels, to God the Judge, to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus Christ. If they escaped not, when they refused Him Who warned on earth, much more we, who turn away from Him Who warneth from heaven (Heb 12:18-25).

There is a question, lying far behind all these, which demands attention.

It is said that legends of wonderful appearances of the gods are common to all religions; that there is no reason for giving credit to this one and rejecting all the rest; and, more than this, that God absolutely could not reveal Himself by sensuous appearances, being Himself a Spirit. In what sense and to what extent God can be said to have really revealed Himself, we shall examine hereafter. At present it is enough to ask whether human love and hatred, joy and sorrow, homage and scorn can manifest themselves by looks and tones, by the open palm and the clenched fist, by laughter and tears, by a bent neck and by a curled lip. For if what is most immaterial in our own soul can find sensuous expression, it is somewhat bold to deny that a majesty and power beyond anything human may at least be conceived as finding utterance, through a mountain burning to the summit and reeling to the base, and the blast of a trumpet which the people could not hear and live.

But when it is argued that wondrous theophanies are common to all faiths, two replies present themselves. If all the races of mankind agree in believing that there is a God, and that He manifests Himself wonderfully, does that really prove that there is no God, or even that He never manifested Himself wondrously? We should certainly be derided if we insisted that such a universal belief proved the truth of the story of Mount Sinai, and perhaps we should deserve our fate. But it is more absurd by far to pretend that this instinct, this intuition, this universal expectation that God would some day, somewhere, rend the veil which hides Him, does actually refute the narrative.

We have also to ask for the production of those other narratives, sublime in their conception and in the vast audience which they challenged, sublimely pure alike from taint of idolatrous superstition and of moral evil, profound and far-reaching in their practical effect upon humanity, which deserve to be so closely associated with the giving of the Mosaic law that in their collapse it also must be destroyed, as the fall of one tree sometimes breaks the next. But this narrative stands out so far in the open, and lifts its head so high, that no other even touches a bough of it when overturned.

Is it seriously meant to compare the alleged disappearance of Romulus, or the secret interviews of Numa with his Egeria, to a history like this? Surely one similar story should be produced, before it is asserted that such stories are everywhere.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] This phrase is not found elsewhere in the Pentateuch. Is it fancy which detects in it a desire to remind them of their connection with the least worthy rather than the noblest of the Patriarchs? One would not expect, for instance, to read, Fear not, thou worm Abraham, or even Israel; but the name of Jacob at once calls up humble associations.

[34] This word is the same which occurs in the verse so beautifully but erroneously rendered “They shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up My jewels” (Mal 3:17, A.V.). “They shall be Mine … in the day that I do make, even a peculiar treasure” (R.V.).

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary