Theological Significance
of Mount Sinai

In a very concrete sense, Israel's experience at Mount Sinai is of paramount importance. There Israel lived, as a nation, for a whole year (from "the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt" (Exo 16:1) until "the twentieth day of the second month of the second year" (Num 10:11)) amidst the glory and presence of God. Never had anything like it ever happened before in the history of any other nation, and nothing like it would ever happen again in Israel's own history as a nation. One would imagine that it was a foretaste of heaven on earth. And yet it was not, for two reasons.

First, God's plan for them was the Promised Land; at the end of the year at Sinai Yahweh had specifically commanded them, "Break camp and advance into the hill country of the Amorites; go to all the neighboring peoples in the Arabah, in the mountains, in the western foothills, in the Negev and along the coast, to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon, as far as the great river, the Euphrates. See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land that the Lord swore he would give to your fathers . . ." (Deut 1:7-8). However comfortable and wonderful our experience of any situation may be, God's plan has to come first. Israel could have given all sorts of wonderful "spiritual" reasons for staying at Sinai, but it would never have been God's plan. Living among the Amorites sounds dangerous and meant hardship and battles. But that was God's plan. God's time for them at Sinai, however worderful the experience of living in God's presence anyone may have felt it to be, was over. The life of faith for Israel, and for us, is not meant to be a life of social and spiritual isolation, even if it would have been seclusion in the glory of God�s presence like Horeb. As the rest of the book will make clear, faithfulness, for Israel, shall not be a purity made viable by the absence of all temptations but by the integrity and resolve of heart, soul, and mind to stand with God in the face of a plurality of alluring alternatives.

Low C.H.©Alberith, 2015