Tag Archives: Mount Sinai

Exodus 33: Repairing the Relationship Between God and Israel

“Ten Commandments by Anton Losenko – Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons –

Exodus 33:1-6 The LORD’s Separation from Israel

The LORD said to Moses, “Go, leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’ ² I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ³ Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

⁴ When the people heard these harsh words, they mourned, and no one put on ornaments. ⁵ For the LORD had said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, and I will decide what to do to you.'” ⁶ Therefore the Israelites stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.

Trust was broken when the Israelites cast and worshipped the golden calf. Perhaps it is my own experience of a broken relationship as well as helping others deal with broken relationships that makes me hear this passage between the LORD and Israel being like the struggling attempts of a couple after trust was broken. The God of the Bible is not the unmoved mover that many Christians imagine, the LORD the God of Israel was passionately invested in this covenant. We see here and many other places in scriptures a wounded God nursing broken dreams and beginning the long journey to the place where trust can be rebuilt. It is not only a journey from Mount Sinai/Horeb to the promised land, it is a journey of rebuilding trust between God and God’s people.

At this point the LORD needs some space from the people. Like a couple who needs to live in separate places after an affair because the presence of the other is a continual reminder of the brokenness that exists between them, the LORD needs space and time to deal with these emotions. The Israelites too in their own way go into mourning. Their ornaments were once removed to cast the golden calf and now they are removed as a mourning of the pain and grief they caused for the LORD and for themselves. They are a people who have lost their God’s trust and who exist in the hope that in the future that trust can be rebuilt, and the relationship restored.

God has not completely walked away from the people or from hope. An angel, and emissary continues to lead and go with the people but the LORD’s desire to dwell among the people has been for a time shattered. The previous focus on the tabernacle is temporarily set aside amid the pain of the broken relationship. Moses still stands between the LORD and the people, clung to by both. For now the people and God journey in parallel paths and Moses’ job will be to bring healing to both God and God’s people.

Exodus 33: 7-11 Separate Camp

⁷ Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. ⁸ Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise and stand, each of them, at the entrance of their tents and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. ⁹ When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the LORD would speak with Moses. ¹⁰ When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise and bow down, all of them, at the entrance of their tent.¹¹ Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then he would return to the camp; but his young assistant, Joshua son of Nun, would not leave the tent.

Much as adults going through a strained portion of a relationship often separate because the immediate presence of the other causes too much pain, now the LORD meets with Moses outside the camp. Moses’ role as the mediator between the people and God in now intensified as Moses still has the LORD’s trust. The people who are longing for reconciliation, those who seek the LORD, wait and watch Moses’ departure to the tent of meeting and return hopeful for some sign that the relationship will be renewed. This is not the desired state of things for God. The LORD’s desire was to be in the center of the camp but now God’s place of meeting is beyond the borders of the camp.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his theological exposition of Genesis 1-3, Creation and Fall, talks about Adam’s original orientation of God placing God in the center of existence. (Bonhoeffer, 1997, p. 88f) In a similar way, the intent for the tabernacle was to echo this place in creation where God is symbolically and theologically in the center of the people of Israel’s life. Both Adam and the people of Israel were to realize their dependence on the LORD’s providence and protection. Yet both would eventually by their disobedience push God to the margins (using Bonhoeffer’s theological metaphor). Yet, God also withdraws to the margins as an act of grace. In the creation narrative it is a grace which overcomes the threat of death to Adam and Eve for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In Exodus it is a grace which prevents the people from being consumed by the wrath of God over their betrayal with the golden calf. Moses as the mediator will now continue to work to bring the people and their God back together and to move God away from the margins and back to the center.

Exodus 33: 12-23 The Presence of God

love me forever by syntheses on deviantart.com

¹² Moses said to the LORD, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people’; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ ¹³ Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” ¹⁴ He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” ¹⁵ And he said to him, “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. ¹⁶ For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.”

¹⁷ The LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” ¹⁸ Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” ¹⁹ And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The LORD’;¹and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. ²⁰ But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” ²¹ And the LORD continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; ²² and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; ²³ then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”

For a beautiful description and meditation on this scene see Ellen Davis’ chapter ‘A Fool for Love: Exodus 33’ in Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament. (Davis, 2001, pp. 153-159) Even though I will be coming at the scene from a different perspective she has some beautiful insights into this scene and suggestions about the character of the LORD. Moses is, “disgusted with the Israelites, betrayed by his own brother, and now even God has bailed out, leaving him alone with a job he never wanted in the first place” (154) and yet he is the one who is caught between a people and their God attempting to make peace. Moses asks for a demonstration of the LORD’s favor and trust in this place where Moses feels abandonment. The LORD attempts to reassure Moses that Moses is seen and known and that the relationship between Moses and God remains strong, but Moses is not willing to allow things to remain as they are. God promises to be present and to walk with Moses (the Hebrew is second person singular-Hebrew has a singular and a plural you unlike English). Moses refuses to allow God to only journey with him, if God will not go with the people Moses asks him to return to the original intent of journeying with the people. For Moses sake God consents to journey with the people and to be vulnerable to the pain that they will cause God along this journey.

God grants Moses request based upon the relationship with Moses, not the people. Moses becomes the one whose prayer is heard when the prayers of the people are not. Moses is one who is righteous for the people, who stands in the gap between the people and God and who holds the relationship together.

Moses makes a bold request of God, to see God’s glory. Moses has been the one who seeks after the LORD throughout the Exodus journey and the LORD grants this request as fully as possible. Moses continues to be the one seeking after God and God consents to be seen in a manner that Moses can endure. God is not insulted by Moses’ request and, as Ellen Davis highlights, God seems to be flattered by it. (157) God has been taken for granted by the people but not by Moses and the LORD has stated that the LORD is a jealous God who will not be taken for granted. Yet, God is willing to show Godself to those who seek and to enter into the relationship with those who are willing to be open to God. Moses’ faithfulness to God’s vision for the relationship between the LORD and the people pulls the LORD back to the LORD’s original dream. Moses’ intercession for the people and desire for God becomes instrumental in the process of reconciliation.

Exodus 24: Sealing the Covenant and Approaching God at Sinai

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David Roberts, Mount Sinai (1839)

Exodus 24: 1-8 Sealing the Covenant

Then he said to Moses, “Come up to the LORD, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship at a distance. ² Moses alone shall come near the LORD; but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.”

³ Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, “All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do.” ⁴ And Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD. He rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and set up twelve pillars, corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel. ⁵ He sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed oxen as offerings of well-being to the LORD. ⁶ Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he dashed against the altar. ⁷ Then he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” ⁸ Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, “See the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

Moses has taken the words of the LORD and the ordinances, presumably the content of the previous four chapters, and returned to the people to communicate and teach them these commandments and laws. The people again answer that “All the words the LORD has spoken we will do.” But now there is a liturgical sealing of the acceptance of the words of God. The covenant is cut, to use the Hebrew phrasing, and these pacts or covenants were often sealed by sacrifice or blood of some type. Genesis 15 is an example of this type of ceremony where God makes a covenant with Abraham and both pass through the pieces of the sacrificed animals, passing through the blood and in effect saying that faithfulness to the covenant is a deadly serious business. Here the blood of the oxen is sprinkled on the people and dashed against the altar binding both parties.

The place of sacrifice is very simple with an altar and twelve pillars. The pillars here correspond to the people rather than some representation of God, the prohibition against forming images of God holds here, although in later times these places with pillars will come to represent the idolatry of the people. Here an altar or earth or uncut stones (see Exodus 20: 22-26) along with the pillars at the base of the Mount Sinai becomes the only things necessary on this holy place. The mountain itself is a holy space, a place where God has come down to dwell among the people. Much of the rest of the book of Exodus will be concerned with the construction of a mobile place that God can come down to dwell with the people, but here, like when God speaks to Moses in chapter three, the people are on holy ground.

The blood of the covenant seals the relationship between the people and their God. They have now received some initial guidance from God on the type of community they are to construct and how they are to live into their identity as a ‘treasured possession, a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.’ (see Exodus 19: 5-6) They are now marked and set aside for their calling. Within Christianity this type of liturgical language of covenant sealing gets echoes both in relation to baptism and in communion. The wine in communion is the ‘blood of the new covenant’ and baptism is a point where the individual is ‘baptized into the death of Christ’ so that they might be dead to sin and alive to Christ.

Jean-Leon Gerome, Moses on Mount Sinai (1895-1900)

Exodus 24: 9-18 Meeting with the LORD on the Mountain

⁹ Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, ¹⁰ and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. ¹¹ God¹did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; also they beheld God, and they ate and drank.

¹² The LORD said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.” ¹³ So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. ¹⁴ To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us, until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them.”

¹⁵ Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. ¹⁶ The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. ¹⁷ Now the appearance of the glory of the LORD was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. ¹⁸ Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.

We are given multiple views of the theophany on Mount Sinai. There is the perspective of the majority of the people at the base of the mountain which is described in a way that the closest analogy would be a volcano. To the people on the ground the approach of God is terrifying and dangerous, a devouring fire on the top of the mountain. For the seventy elders and the three priests there is the appearance of a dwelling place of God, beautiful in its description and an appearance of God that is only modestly described. There is a physical manifestation of the LORD, whose feet rest upon a pavement of sapphire stones of great clarity and the LORD is described anthropomorphically (using human features even when done metaphorically like when it states God did not lay his hands on the chief men). Yet, unlike in Isaiah 6 or Ezekiel 1 (and even these theophanies are very reticent to discuss the actual appearance of the LORD) there is no description of the LORD. Unlike other religions where there are vivid representations of the gods and goddesses, Judaism’s aniconic relationship with their God also extends to descriptions of God’s appearance with words. Yet, within the book of Exodus, there are multiple times where there is a tangible presence of God, even if it is not something to be described or even fully seen (as in Exodus 33). Finally, there is the experience of Moses who will spend extended periods of time in God’s presence.

The scene also sets the stage for the drama that will come in Exodus 32. Moses departs up the mountain for forty days and forty nights in the cloud with the LORD. The people remain at the base of the mountain waiting on Moses and Aaron and Hur are left to hear the disputes of the people. The next several chapters will have God describe to Moses the vision for the tabernacle where God can come down to dwell with the people. Yet, during this absence the people will come to Aaron and move away from God’s command not to create an image of God by creating the golden calf which they will worship. Yet, for a time we get to ascend with Moses into the cloud and see the vision of the tabernacle and enter into this time away from the people and with God.

Exodus 19: Arriving at Sinai to Encounter God

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View from the Summit of Mount Sinai, Picture by Modammed Moussa. Shared under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Exodus 19: 1-9 Borne on Eagles Wings to Sinai

On the third new moon after the Israelites had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that very day, they came into the wilderness of Sinai. ² They had journeyed from Rephidim, entered the wilderness of Sinai, and camped in the wilderness; Israel camped there in front of the mountain. ³ Then Moses went up to God; the LORD called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: ⁴ You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. ⁵ Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, ⁶ but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.”

⁷ So Moses came, summoned the elders of the people, and set before them all these words that the LORD had commanded him. ⁸ The people all answered as one: “Everything that the LORD has spoken we will do.” Moses reported the words of the people to the LORD. ⁹ Then the LORD said to Moses, “I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and so trust you ever after.”

The book of Exodus spends the first thirteen chapters with the people in Egypt and with the LORD and Moses working to get Pharaoh to let the people go. I originally thought of the book of Exodus being primarily about the physical journey out of Egypt to the promised land but it is telling that the movement of the people in the book comes to an end here. The books of Numbers, the beginning of Deuteronomy and ultimately the book of Joshua will narrate the long remaining journey into the promised land but in Exodus the movement ends at Mount Sinai. The LORD has made the journey out of Egypt and through the wilderness possible but the events at Mount Sinai will occupy over half of the book of Exodus.

The image of the people being borne on eagles’ wings probably takes many people to the lyrical adaptation of Psalm 91, ‘and he will lift you up on eagles’ wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun and hold you in the palm of his hands.’ This image of God bearing the people on eagles’ wings is a poetic metaphor that gets used in the song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 where the LORD is the mother eagle hovering over her chicks and lifting them into the air with her feathers as well as being a metaphor used in several Psalms (Psalm 17:8, 36:7, 57:1, 61:4, and 63:7 all mention being sheltered in God’s wings as well as the Psalm 91:4 mentioned above). This powerful image of nurturing strength resonated with the people of Israel and continues to resonate with many people today. While metaphors never completely express who God is, they bear witness to a portion of the divine identity and here the motherly attributes of a mother bird as well as the strength of the protective eagle combine in this potent image. The LORD of Israel is a God of strength who can take the people out of Egypt like a warrior, but who like a mother provides food, water and shelter. Ultimately the destination of the people in Exodus is to come into the wilderness to meet God.

In coming chapters, we will see in greater detail what obedience will mean for the covenant people but here Israel is called to be God’s treasured possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. What each of these three vocations is to mean has been a rich territory for scholarly and holy imagination. We may, with our current sensitivities, be a little uncomfortable with the first vocation where the people of Israel are called to be a treasured possession: possession may call to mind images of slavery or chattel (where women, slave, and children were possessions and not people) but we need not take this image in this way. Israel will occupy a special place in the LORD’s heart and while being drawn near to God in this way in vulnerable for both the people and the LORD. The prophet Jeremiah, for example, will bear witness to a God who is wounded by the people’s betrayal and who wants to find a way to restore the relationship and yet deals intensely with the pain of the brokenness. As Isaiah 43 can state, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name you are mine….I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight” (Isaiah 43: 1,3-4)

The people of Israel as a priestly kingdom can also be taken in several directions. On the one hand, there is the intercessory role that may be a portion of this calling. Priests in the ancient world were those who interceded between God and the people. While there is a cultic aspect of the priest’s role in offering prayers and sacrifices in the temple to God there is also the didactic role. The priests will be responsible for reading and interpreting the Torah, the law of God. Perhaps as the priests of Israel will intercede for the people of Israel with God, so the people will intercede on behalf of the nations and the world with God. Perhaps as the priests verbally read and interpret the law to the people so the people may be expected to interpret through their words and actions the content of the law to the nations around them. Both functions occupy a lot of space in the Old Testament: Leviticus for example focuses a lot of text on the priestly/cultic function while Deuteronomy and much of the second half of Exodus focuses on interpreting the law. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks also points to an additional function that may have been a part of this calling: being a society of universal literacy. While the Hebrew people probably didn’t come close to universal literacy in the ancient world he makes an intriguing argument for this type of education being essential for their being able to work with a law that can be read and written. Universal literacy which takes writing and reading out of the hands of the elite and makes possible “a non-hierarchical society” (Sacks, 2010, p. 136) If the people were to be a society different from the Egyptian society they left, and much of the law will be contrasted to their experience of being slaves in Egypt, then a worthy goal would be having a society that could read and write the law of their God and understand as individuals how they were called to live. In this respect, it could be paralleled to Martin Luther’s idea of the priesthood of all believers which required a program of catechetical instruction for all believers into what the basics of faith were.

As a holy people, a people sanctified for a purpose they also have a rich vocation within this calling of being a treasured possession and a priestly kingdom. Their lives as a part of this covenant are set aside to be something different. One of the struggles of both the people of Israel and modern people of faith is the struggle to differentiate their lives from the lives of everyone else. For the people of Israel there will be concrete practices and actions that they do that help to be a boundary marker for who they are as the people of God. Yet, the temptation will be to model their lives based on the lives of the nations around them (especially nations more powerful than them) rather than on the calling their LORD has given them. There will be times where the Torah seems to be lost or forgotten and yet, as Jeremiah can hope there will come a time where the LORD will put the law within them and write it on their hearts (Jeremiah 31: 33).

To be the people of God will be a way of life. The book of Exodus will begin the process of unpacking what it will mean to live as the covenant people of God, as God’s treasured possessions, as a priestly kingdom and as a holy people. The journey is not only the journey out of Egypt to the promised land. It is also a journey from slavery in Egypt to being a people equipped to stand in the presence of God and intercede for the nations and be bearers of the law of God.

Exodus 19: 9b-25 The Consecration of the People and the Approach of the LORD

When Moses had told the words of the people to the LORD, ¹⁰ the LORD said to Moses: “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes ¹¹ and prepare for the third day, because on the third day the LORD will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. ¹² You shall set limits for the people all around, saying, ‘Be careful not to go up the mountain or to touch the edge of it. Any who touch the mountain shall be put to death. ¹³ No hand shall touch them, but they shall be stoned or shot with arrows;¹whether animal or human being, they shall not live.’ When the trumpet sounds a long blast, they may go up on the mountain.” ¹⁴ So Moses went down from the mountain to the people. He consecrated the people, and they washed their clothes. ¹⁵ And he said to the people, “Prepare for the third day; do not go near a woman.”

¹⁶ On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled. ¹⁷ Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. They took their stand at the foot of the mountain. ¹⁸ Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the LORD had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently. ¹⁹ As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder. ²⁰ When the LORD descended upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain, the LORD summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. ²¹ Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go down and warn the people not to break through to the LORD to look; otherwise many of them will perish. ²² Even the priests who approach the LORD must consecrate themselves or the LORD will break out against them.” ²³ Moses said to the LORD, “The people are not permitted to come up to Mount Sinai; for you yourself warned us, saying, ‘Set limits around the mountain and keep it holy.'” ²⁴ The LORD said to him, “Go down, and come up bringing Aaron with you; but do not let either the priests or the people break through to come up to the LORD; otherwise he will break out against them.” ²⁵ So Moses went down to the people and told them.

Climbing the Trail Near the Summit of Mount Sinai, Photograph by Mark A. Wilson. Copyright holder released work into public domain.

One of the losses of the Christian tradition in recent times has been the loss of this transcendental holiness of the approach of God. One of the central features of the Christian narrative is the descent of God into the mundaneness of humanity. For the past couple centuries, there has been both a philosophical and religious movement away from focusing on this transcendent holiness. Even within my tradition seasons like Lent and Advent, once times of fasting and prayer and times of preparation for holiness, have lost this movement of sanctification. Perhaps this is inevitable in the disenchanted and more secular world in which we live but as I look at this passage I wonder how much we have lost.

The people prepare for three days for the approach of the LORD. They wash, they abstain from sexual activity, they stay away from the sacred space and they prepare for this approach of God at Mount Sinai. Here is the approach of God in all of God’s awesome power. In a description of a scene like the eruption of a volcano with fire, smoke, earthquake and lightning God approaches the people and Moses comes to introduce the LORD to the people and to stand between them. Moses and Aaron will go up to the mountain and speak with the LORD, but the people are witnesses to this display of God’s powerful approach.

There is something dangerous in the approach of God and the people are to keep their distance. One of the great tensions in the book of Exodus is the desire of the LORD to tabernacle (dwell) among the people and the danger the people’s unholiness presents for themselves in the presence of God. The people will struggle with the presence of God. On the one hand, they will want continued demonstration of God’s provision and power against their enemies. On the other hand, the presence of God is a terrifying reality and one they do not want to draw too close to. A God who bears the power to bring the Egyptian army, its Pharaoh and its gods to their knees is not a safe and controllable deity. As a priestly kingdom, they come into the presence of God for the sake of the world, and their priestly vocation is not a safe one. As a treasured possession, they are the ones that God wants to draw close to God’s presence and they are to be a nation sanctified for the sake of the world. They are made holy to be able to dwell in the presence of the numinous and awesome holiness of the LORD.

Sign of the Rose

Searchings: Sacred and Secular