Exodus 19:1

II. JEHOVAH REVEALED AS KING OF ISRAEL.

The Divine Glory, and the Giving of the Law at Sinai. Chaps.

Exodus 19:1 to Exodus 24:18 .

THE ENCAMPMENT AT MOUNT SINAI, 1, 2.

We now approach the most sublime and impressive narrative of Old Testament history. After the struggle and victory of the exodus, and after two months’ experience of desert journeys and exposures, the Israelites came and pitched their tents at the holy mountain where Moses beheld the burning bush. Comp. Exodus 3:12. Here they were to await further revelations of Jehovah .

The particular mountain at which the law was given has naturally been the subject of earnest research. Three different summits have their claims to this distinction Serbal, Jebel Musa, and Ras es-Sufsafeh all of them notable among the prominent mountains of the Sinaitic peninsula. Having identified Rephidim with the Wady Feiran at the northern base of Serbal, (see on Exodus 17:1,) we need not linger here to consider its claims, which indeed seem very futile . Jebel Musa has in its favour the local traditions of at least fifteen centuries, and occupies the centre of the Sinaitic group of mountains. Its summit consists of an area of huge rocks, about eighty feet in diameter, partly covered with ruins, but the view is confined, and far less extensive and imposing than that from other summits in the group. There is no spot to be seen around it suitable for a large encampment, and the bottoms of the adjacent valleys are invisible. (Robinson, Biblical Researches, vol. i, pp. 104, 105.) Far more imposing and every way in harmony with the scriptural narrative is the height known as Ras es-Sufsa-feh, at the north-western end of the same ridge, overlooking the plain of er-Rahah. See note on Exodus 19:12. Robinson describes the view from this summit as follows: “The whole plain er-Rahah lay spread out beneath our feet, with the adjacent wadies and mountains; while Wady esh-Sheikh on the right, and the recess on the left, both connected with and opening broadly from er-Rahah, presented an area which serves nearly to double that of the plain. Our conviction was strengthened that here, or on some of the adjacent cliffs, was the spot where the Lord descended in fire and proclaimed the law. Here lay the plain where the whole congregation might be assembled; here was the mount that could be approached and touched, if not forbidden; and here the mountain-brow where alone the lightnings and the thick cloud would be visible, and the thunders and the voice of the trump be heard, when the Lord ‘came down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai.’ We gave ourselves up to the awful scene; and read, with a feeling that shall never be forgotten, the sublime account of the transaction of the commandments there promulgated, in the original words as recorded by the great Hebrew legislator.” Biblical Researches, vol. i, p. 107. For further discussion of the subject, see Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, pp. 74-76; Palmer, Desert of the Exodus, chapter vi, and the biblical cyclopaedias under the word Sinai.

1. In the third month,… the same day This is certainly a singular form of statement, and begets the suspicion of some corruption in the Masoretic text . The day of the month is not given, and the rendering, in the third new moon, adopted by many exegetes, and explained as equivalent to the first day of the third month, has no parallel in Hebrew usage. Had that been the author’s meaning why would he not have employed the form of expression which appears in Exodus 40:1; Exodus 40:17? Comp . also the usage as seen in Genesis 8:5; Genesis 8:13; Leviticus 23:24; Numbers 1:1. In Numbers 9:1; Numbers 20:1, the name of the month only is given, and, were it not for the words, the same day, in our verse, we would naturally suppose that the writer did not intend to specify the day of the month when Israel arrived at Mount Sinai. But those words seem best explained by the supposition that the day of the month was originally written in the earlier part of the verse, but before the date of the ancient versions it by some oversight was dropped out. To explain the words, the same day, in connexion with the mention of the third month, as here, in the general sense of time, (“at that time,”) is very unsatisfactory. According to Bush, who explains the text as it now stands as meaning the first day of the month, “this was just forty-five days after the departure from Egypt; for, adding sixteen days of the first month to twenty-nine of the second, the result is forty-five. To these we must add the day on which Moses went up to God, (Exodus 19:3,) the next day after, when he returned their answer to God, (Exodus 19:7-8,) and the three days more mentioned in Exodus 19:10-11, which form altogether just fifty days from the passover to the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. Hence the feast which was kept in after-times to celebrate this event was called Pentecost, or the fiftieth day.” Notes on Exodus, in loco. But this idea, which appears nowhere in Josephus, or Philo, or any of the older Jewish writers, seems to be a late rabbinic tradition, and without valid warrant in Scripture.

The wilderness of Sinai This expression denotes the open plain “before the mount,” (Exodus 19:2,) where the Israelites encamped and remained during the giving of the law, and the construction of the tabernacle. Comp. Leviticus 8:38; Numbers 1:1; Numbers 1:19; Numbers 3:14; Numbers 9:1; Numbers 10:12, etc . The magnificent plain er-Rahah, which lies at the base of Ras es-Sufsafeh, most remarkably meets the conditions of the biblical narrative, and is the only place yet discovered in the Sinaitic mountains large enough to accommodate a congregation of two million people, and overhung by a mountain which may be literally touched from the plain below.