Exodus 19:1-3

"In the third month after the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. And when they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to the wilderness of Sinai, they encamped in the wilderness; and there Israel encamped before the mount. 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."

"In the third month ... the same day of the month ..." Scholars are uncertain as to the meaning of this last phrase; and, as a result of this, it is impossible to pinpoint accurately the exact time of their coming to Sinai. However, the traditional way of understanding this appears to us to be absolutely accurate. Jamieson fixed the time of their arrival at 45 days after the Passover,[1] basing this upon the meaning ascribed by the Jews to the phrase, "the same day of the month, the first day of the month. If that is the case, then two days elapsed in: (1) making the encampment; and (2) returning the people's answers to God; and three more days elapsed during the three-day period of their sanctification, making five more days in all before the giving of the Law! The principal thing that commends this calculation to us is that this understanding makes the giving of God's Law to have occurred on "The Fiftieth Day," the Pentecost, which corresponds exactly to the N.T. revelation that the giving of the Gospel to mankind also occurred on the Pentecost (Acts 2).

Despite the fact that many scholars deny this understanding of the place, and in spite of the observation of Keil that, "The Jewish tradition that assigns the giving of the law to the fiftieth day after the Passover is of far too recent date to pass for historical,"[2] we still adhere to the view expressed by Jamieson. First, there is nothing in the text that denies this possibility; and second, we have here, in all probability, another example of light shed by one of the Testaments upon the other. It is the N.T. truth that explains this passage.

Some translations, such as the New English Bible, and the new translation of the Torah, render "the new moon" instead of month here, but as Keil said, "The Hebrew word here is never rendered `new moon' in the Pentateuch."[3] This is merely another case of "Reed Sea" speculation - erroneous, of course.

So much for WHEN all this happened. The place of WHERE is also disputed and argued about almost endlessly. However, the traditional site assigned to Sinai is amply supported by all of the evidence that is needed. The preponderant opinion of all segments of faith, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant, with near unanimity, accepts the traditional identification as Jebel Musa. Dummelow's presentation of this is:

"The prodigious mountain block of Ras es Sufsafeh, is identified by Dean Stanley and others as the mount on which the Law was given. It rises some 7,000 feet, sheer from the plain like a huge altar. Some, however (in fact the majority) believe that the actual mount of the Law was another peak of the same range, southward, called Jebel Musa, the traditional site. The whole district has been described as one of the most awe-inspiring regions on the face of the earth."[4]

There is really no good reason to set aside the Monastery of St. Catherine's at the foot of Mount Sinai being quite near the actual place. In the general sense, Mount Sinai is located near the southern apex of the Sinaitic peninsula. As Huey expressed it: "For hundreds of years Jebul Musa (Mountain of Moses), some 7,647 feet high in the southern Sinai peninsula has found the greatest number of supporters as the actual place."[5] The whole question of exactly WHERE the Law was given is of much less importance than WHAT was done there!

"And Moses went up unto God ..." We should have expected Moses to do this, for God had told him that Moses and the children of Israel would worship God "upon this mountain" (Exodus 3:12). Moses and the people had now indeed come to that "mountain", and Moses promptly went up into the mountain to procure the instructions on just how that was to be done.

"The house of Jacob ..." "This expression does not occur anywhere else in the Pentateuch."[6] This is an important fact because of the identication it makes certain as to what "covenant" is meant in Jeremiah's reference to the "house of Judah" (Jeremiah 31:31). Judah was "of Jacob" and no other. Furthermore, the apostasy of the other tribes made it inappropriate to use "Jacob" without a delimitation.