Hebrews 12:26

26. He See note on the last verse.

Then… now At Sinai then, at Zion now. The former the inauguration of Mosaicism, the latter of Christianity.

Earth… also heaven Delitzsch and Alford labour painfully to refer the latter shaking to Christ’s second advent to judge the world. The antithesis, then, would be between the scene of Sinai and the final conflagration and renewal of the earth. This is, again, a very incongruous antithesis. The shaking of Sinai would be physically a very insignificant event, out of all comparison with such a mundane revolution as the earth’s destruction. Alford fully urges that “it is wrong to understand this shaking of the mere breaking down of Judaism.” But surely the overthrow of the old dispensation was as important an event as its first establishment. The inauguration of the new kingdom by Christ’s first advent was an immensely more stupendous event than the first inauguration of the law. Symbolically, Zion is, a far taller mountain than Sinai. As a physical phenomenon, the proper antithesis to the day of Sinai is the day of Pentecost. See our notes on Acts 2:1-4. On that day heaven and earth were shaken physically, and as broadly as at Sinai, and with an infinitely sublimer significance; a significance pervading all the Christian ages.