Exodus 19:4-6
I bare you on eagles’ wings
The covenant is offered with its history first and its terms second. A kingdom of priests and an holy nation is the job description.
Places of the Bible
Mount Sinai
A mountain nobody was allowed to touch, where a nation was given a constitution and broke it inside forty days.
Also called Horeb, the mountain of God
Moses had already been here once, alone, at a bush that would not burn away, and was told that the sign would be that he would bring the people back to worship on this mountain. They arrive in the third month. The preparation is three days long and mostly about distance: bounds are set around the mount, and whosoever touches it, man or beast, shall surely be put to death. The holiness is treated as a physical hazard.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Mount Sinai
- 01
- 02
Exodus 19:16-19
The whole mount quaked greatly
Thunders, lightnings, a thick cloud and a trumpet exceeding loud. All the people that was in the camp trembled, which is recorded rather than corrected.
- 03
Exodus 20:18-21
Speak thou with us, and we will hear
They ask for a mediator because the direct voice is unbearable, and the request is granted. Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.
- 04
Exodus 24:9-11
They saw God, and did eat and drink
Seventy-four men go up and the covenant is confirmed with a meal. The description stops at his feet and the pavement under them.
- 05
Exodus 32:15-19
He cast the tables out of his hands
He comes down carrying writing described as the work of God, graven on both sides, and breaks it in sight of the thing that made it necessary.
- 06
Exodus 34:1-7
Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first
The second set is cut by Moses rather than given whole, and what is proclaimed over them is a description of character rather than a rule.
Why it matters
What is given here is the framework the rest of the Old Testament runs on. Ten commandments spoken aloud to everyone, then the ordinances, then a covenant sealed with blood and a meal, and the elders see the God of Israel with a paved work of a sapphire stone under his feet. Then Moses goes up for forty days and the people at the bottom, unable to wait, build something they can see. The tablets are broken at the foot of the mountain that gave them, and the chapters that follow are about whether the arrangement survives it.
4 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
