Moses, Part 7: Covenant

Part 1: Youth | Part 2: Exile | Part 3: Call | Part 4: Confrontation | Part 5: Deliverance | Part 6: Preparation

Now free of Pharaoh’s mastery, the Israelites follow Moses to Sinai, the mountain where God had first appeared to him in the burning bush (Ex 3.12). The journey takes somewhere between two and three months (Ex 19.1). There, again, God speaks privately to Moses (Ex 19.3) and makes the initial offer of a special covenant relationship with Israel (Ex 19.3-6).

This initial offer includes several things (Ex 19.5-6):

• Israel will be to God a “peculiar treasure” (KJV), a “special treasure” (NKJV), more significant than his ownership of all nations on earth (Ex 19.5);

• they will be “a kingdom of priests” (Ex 19.6a). They may not understand the significance of this language, since at this point they have not received the details of the Mosaic Law, which specifies that initially no one can be both a king and a priest; they already know from Jacob’s dying prophecy that the kings will come from the tribe of Judah (Ge 49.10), but the Law will specify further that Israelite priests will come only from Levi / Aaron (Ex 28.1), and that restriction will be enforced with the death penalty (Num 16.1-35). Thus this element of the covenant looks ahead to Christ, the king from Judah who is also an appointed priest after the order of Melchizedek (Ps 110.4) and to his body, the church (1P 2.9), and further to the eschaton (Re 5.10).
• they will be “a holy nation,” a people set apart unto God.

This Covenant will be based on God’s power to deliver them from Egypt (Ex 19.4), which demonstrated his loving intentions toward them, and will be conditioned on their obedience (Ex 19.5).

Moses presents this offer to the elders of Israel, and “all the people” respond, “All that YHWH has spoken we will do” (Ex 19.8).

In essence, God has proposed marriage to Israel, and she has responded, “Yes!”

In this brief initial exchange God has communicated with the people through Moses as an intermediary, a messenger. In the next step God will speak to his betrothed directly. He instructs Moses that all Israel should prepare itself for this meeting by taking two days to cleanse themselves (Ex 19.10). On the third day God will appear to them in some form (Ex 19.11).

This will be a dangerous time, for God is not an ordinary suitor; there must be some distance between the people and God’s manifestation of himself (Ex 19.12-13).

Moses delivers this message, and the people prepare (Ex 19.14-15).

On the third day God himself comes down upon the mountain (Ex 19.18-20). The evidences are visual–fire and smoke–and auditory–an earthquake, a trumpet, and a voice. This is an awe-inspiring and frightening scene (Ex 20.18-20).

God calls Moses back up the mountain and repeats the importance of distance between the people and the mountain (Ex 19.21-23). Then he instructs Moses to return to the mountain top, this time with Aaron, but not the priests or any of the people (Ex 19.24).

This reference to the priests is puzzling. There has been no mention of Israelite priests to this point. As we have seen, Melchizedek is called a priest, as is Reuel / Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law. There are passing references to the pagan priests of Egypt during the confrontation with Pharaoh, but that’s it.

When were these Israelite priests appointed? We don’t know. The reference here to Aaron may imply that his family has been given some priestly responsibilities already, but there’s no specific account of that.

At this meeting, between God and Moses and Aaron, God gives what we’ve come to know as the Ten Commandments (Ex 20.1-17). This is the initial statement, the basics, of the Covenant. As we shall see, there’s much, much more coming, but for now these requirements constitute the essentials of Israel’s relationship with God (Ex 20.1-11) and with one another (Ex 20.12-17). Though Paul makes much of the fact that the works of the Law did not justify (e.g. Galatians)–God implies that here by commanding that the altars not be made with hewn stones (Ex 20.25)–this brief passage has long served the entire world as a good summary of how God intends the world to work.

Next time: the Law expands.

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash