In Exodus 19, we read one of the most tragic stories in the Bible…a pivotal moment in the history of Israel with ramifications for many others. It results in the giving of the Law which brought both death and punishment into the world. Prior to this event, there has been no law. About 2500 years of human history has transpired and no law existed. After the law, there were about 1300 years until Jesus came. So there were twice as many years without the law as with it. The advent of the Law brought a dramatic shift.
In both Exodus 15 and Numbers 11, the Israelites were grumbling about their situation. In Exodus, there was no punishment; in Numbers, God’s wrath was kindled and the fire of the Lord burned among them, killing some of them. In Exodus 16 and Numbers 11, they are grumbling again, this time about the manna and quail. Prior to the law(Exodus 16) there was no punishment; after the law was given(Numbers 11), God’s wrath burned against them and He struck them down with a very great plague. In Exodus 16:27-30, we read of those who went on on the 7th day to gather manna…they were reprimanded, but no punishment; But, in Numbers 15:32-36, we read of a man who was gathering sticks on the Sabbath. He was brought before the congregation who stoned him until he was dead.
Paul tells us in Romans 4:15 that the law brings wrath. We see this in pre- and post-law comparisons When the law was given…it brought death. After this moment at Mt Sinai when the law was given, we find a pattern of death and punishment that we do not see prior to Exodus 19.
Why did the Law come? In short…the Israelites asked for it. But, let’s look at it.
Israel is encamped around Mt Sinai, 3 months after leaving Egypt. God offers them, in essence, a grant covenant. “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:4-6)
God is desiring that Israel become a nation of priests where everyone would have direct access to Him. They wisely accepted His offer. Then, God instructed Moses as to how they were to prepare for the covenant ceremony. They were to consecrate and wash themselves over 3 days. Then, on the 3rd day, God would descend in a dense cloud. They must not touch the mountain or come near it until they had heard the blast of the ram’s horn. After they heard that blast, they could come near. They were invited to approach Him after this preparation.
On the 3rd day, “there were thunders and lightnings and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Moses brought the people out to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now, Mt Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him in thunder.” (Ex. 19:16, 18-19)
We can get some “behind the scenes” information of this event when we read Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is a retelling of Israel’s covenant journey with God in preparation for the renewal of the covenant and transfer of leadership from Moses to Joshua. In Deuteronomy 5:23-27, Moses is re-telling this scene from Exodus. “When you heard the voice out of the darkness, while the mountain was ablaze with fire, all the leaders of your tribes and your elders came to me. And you said, ‘The Lord our God has shown us his glory and his majesty; and we have heard his voice from the fire. Today we have seen that a person can live even if God speaks with them. But now, why should we die? This great fire will consume us and we will die if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer. For what mortal has ever heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the fire, as we have, and survived? Go near and listen to all that the Lord our God says. Then tell us whatever the Lord our God tells you. We will listen and obey.”
Because of their slave-minded fear, the people of Israel rejected God’s offer of a grant covenant…a relationship…and asked for rules instead. They had seen His majesty. They had seen His glory. They had heard His voice. AND LIVED! But, it terrified them and they were too scared to risk death by entering into a relationship. It’s understandable in some ways. They had spent 400 years observing the behavior of the Egyptian gods and the power they seemed to hold. Now, this God decimated those gods. The lightning, thunder, smoke was terrifying and the mountain itself trembled with the presence of God. A frightening experience to be sure. But, they had also seen Him deliver them from the Egyptians, open the sea so they could walk through on dry ground, provided manna and quail in the wilderness, as well as water from a rock. This was not a request for blind faith…they had reason to trust Him. But, their fear overcame their trust. And they said no to God’s offer of a relationship.
When we return to the account in Exodus 19, it appears that God adjusted His plans to their fear. He descended to the top of the mountain “and called Moses to the top of the mountain. Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the Lord and many of them perish. Even the priests, who approach the Lord, must consecrate themselves, or the Lord will break out against them.” Originally, they were all invited to approach Him…after the blast of the ram’s horn…now, per their request, only Moses is invited to approach Him. Plus, it’s important to realize that the priests mentioned here is not referring to the Levitical priests that came later, but priests according to their patriarchal culture…the firstborn male of each household was automatically priest of that family.
God sometimes seems to use or request offensive things to test the perseverance or commitment of His covenant partners. We see this in Genesis 22 when He asked Abraham to sacrifice his son. Abraham passed….And Israel failed. They could not get past their fear. They were so gripped by His majesty and glory that they pushed Him away. They rejected His offer of a grant covenant in which every person would be a priest, and they elected Moses to be their mediator. This moment in Israel’s history is tragic…God came down and talked with them audibly, invited them into His presence and into a relationship…and they decided they did not want to hear His voice but would rather go through Moses. They would stand at their tents and watch as Moses entered the tent and the presence of God. Whatever Moses heard from God, they would obey. They chose rules over relationship… And sadly, many of us still choose the same thing. We are so gripped by His majesty, glory and power that we fear to draw near to Him. We much prefer the solidity of rules over the flexibility of relationship…the dogmatism of written expectations over learning to listen to His voice…the certainty of knowing over the uncertainty of discerning.
God sometimes seems to use or request offensive things to test the perseverance or commitment of His covenant partners. We see this in Genesis 22 when He asked Abraham to sacrifice his son. Abraham passed….And Israel failed. They could not get past their fear. They were so gripped by His majesty and glory that they pushed Him away. They rejected His offer of a grant covenant in which every person would be a priest, and they elected Moses to be their mediator. This moment in Israel’s history is tragic…God came down and talked with them audibly, invited them into His presence and into a relationship…and they decided they did not want to hear His voice but would rather go through Moses. They would stand at their tents and watch as Moses entered the tent and the presence of God. Whatever Moses heard from God, they would obey. They chose rules over relationship… And sadly, many of us still choose the same thing. We are so gripped by His majesty, glory and power that we fear to draw near to Him. We much prefer the solidity of rules over the flexibility of relationship…the dogmatism of written expectations over learning to listen to His voice…the certainty of knowing over the uncertainty of discerning.
In the next chapter, we read the 10 Commandments and the beginning of their relationship based upon rules….the law. This chapter describes a typical Ancient Near East kinship covenant. Our understanding of the 10 commandments hinders us a little from understanding what they were and what they entailed. We imagine Charlton Heston coming down a mountain carrying 2 rounded-off tablets of stone. We envision those stone tables with the commands listed by Roman Numerals…5 on one tablet and 5 on the other. In reality, there were 2 tablets “that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. The tablets were the work of God and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.” (Ex. 32:15b-16 They were most likely square tablets with the commands inscribed on both sides. The 2nd tablet was a duplicate of the 1st…a normal practice in the covenant ceremony of ancient world.
In a kinship ceremony, two people came together to make a covenant and would draft a list of rules each would abide by. This list would embody the covenant they made together. Each part would have a copy of the list. Each party would take home one of the copies of the covenant agreement. They would each take their copy to their temple or tabernacle and place it in a box called an ark. An ark of the covenant was a common piece of furniture in the temples and tabernacles of the ANE. The understanding was that if tribe 1 violated the covenant with tribe 2, the god of tribe 1 would punish them for it. In other words, the practice of placing the copies in their respective arks was saying, “If we violate our covenant with you, our god will punish us.”(1)
But, in the Sinai covenant, God was representing Himself. He had no God to keep Him in line. Moses kept both copies of the covenant tablets. Eventually, both were put in the ark of the covenant. God had no one over Him to make sure He kept His word. The Psalmist says that “You magnify Your word above your name.” Ps. 138:2. God chose to put Himself UNDER His Word as a commitment that He would keep His promise No matter what. He was more concerned with His Word..His faithfulness to this covenant He was entering into…. than His name or reputation. He was willing to be misunderstood as to His character to remain faithful to His covenant. And for 1300 years, this covenant veiled the heart and desire of God. Even beyond that era, for generations, even up to the modern era, many have misconceptions about God because of the violent portrayal of Him in the Old Testament.
This also put God in an awkward position. He had to fulfill the roles of both god 1 and god 2, holding Himself accountable to the covenant, but also holding Israel, His covenant partner, accountable to it. This made Him both partner and punisher. This was not His idea….It was Israel’s choice. Their request of a kinship covenant rather than a grant covenant put God in a position He did not want, and now He became their punisher. He wanted a nation of priests who all had direct access to Him and represented Him to the rest of the world…they chose a mediator. He wanted to speak to them audibly…they wanted Him to speak to them through a mediator. He wanted a treasured possession and a holy nation…they chose servanthood. It was what they were accustomed to…what they had seen in Egypt. It sounded good to them, but was a set-up for failure. God recognized it as a bad idea, but condescended to their level and agreed.
This helps to explain the difference in God’s responses before and after Sinai. Before, He would reprimand them because He wanted them to be a nation of priests. But after Sinai, He was forced by the covenant to punish them for violating it. God is not a deity who desires to strike people dead if they pick up sticks on the Sabbath…the covenant He entered into with Israel at their request placed Him in that position. I would suggest that it was not His holiness that compelled Him to bring punishment and death for the slightest offense, but His faithfulness as a covenant partner.
This arrangement also put Him at odds with their enemies. He was now obligated to bring down judgment and wrath against the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, and others who fought against Israel. Because of the covenant, He was drawn into battles that He did not choose or desire. Had He not done so, He would not have been a faithful covenant partner. He would have violated His side of the covenant He had with Israel. While to us, it messes with our view of Him, He was more concerned with His Word than His reputation. (Also, He knew the day was coming when He would be accurately represented in Jesus.) Under a grant covenant, God would not have needed to do this because His people would have been priests to represent Him to humanity. Think about what “might have been” had Israel accepted the grant covenant God offered them. They would have become His priests…representing Him and His heart…to their enemies. Could they have been transformed rather than destroyed?
Another sad outcome of Mt Sinai is that it is the last time in the OT that God spoke audibly to the congregation of Israel. From then on, God spoke through others. This moment is the official transition away from God’s original desire for a nation of priests to the people’s desire for a mediator.
In 2 Corinthians 3-4, Paul speaks of the Mosaic covenant being a veil over God and only in Christ could the veil be taken away. This covenant did not represent God’s heart for Israel or toward humanity. It did not represent His interests or what He wanted to do on earth. The kinship covenant and the Law place a veil over God, disguising the true desires of His heart. As a result, many were confused about what God was like…and many still are. We tend to look at the OT and the Law, placing equal value on the way God is represented, seeking to “balance” the different revelations of God we see in the Old and New Testaments…but we can’t. The OT portrayal of God is inaccurate and distorted; in the NT, He is perfectly revealed in Jesus. We see the violent portraits of God and try to fit that with our view of God as revealed in Jesus. In reality, we should look at the OT portrayals of God through the cross. “On the cross, Jesus took on the appearance of one who was guilty though in fact He was not. When we read the Bible’s violent portraits with the awareness that the cross reveals what God is really like, we can begin to discern what is going on behind the scenes when God is portrayed violently. He is, in a nutshell, stooping to in some sense become the sin and curse of the hard-hearted people he is working with. He is thereby taking on the appearance of one who engages in and commands violence, though in fact He is not.“(2) Because of His faithfulness to His covenant with Israel, He responded to situations…both sin and enemy conflicts…in ways that in no way represented His heart. And we must never forget that this arrangement was NOT His idea…Israel requested it. His plan was a kingdom of priests who represented Him to the world.
In the New Covenant, we are those priests. “He has made us competent as ministers of the new covenant…not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” 2 Cor 3:6 We represent God to the world. Are we representing Him as an angry deity who has a list of rules we need to obey…whose majesty and glory are keep us gripped by fear of Him…whose holiness demands punishment? Or, are we representing Him to the world as a loving Father who seeks relationship with us, wanting us to know His heart more than a list of rules, and who is so faithful to His word as to sacrifice His reputation…whose faithfulness compelled Him to take on the appearance of violent, angry God when in fact He is not?
Endnotes:
1. Welton, Jonathan.(2014). Understanding the Whole Bible. Rochester, NY: Jon Welton Ministries, pp. 190-191
2. Boyd, Gregory. (2013). Benefit of the Doubt. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, div. of Baker Publishing Group. pp. 190-191.