Exodus19chapter 19

Exodus 19:1-2

Israel reaches the mountain in the third month after leaving Egypt, and verse 2 traces the last stage from Rephidim, where the rock was struck and Amalek was fought. Exodus 3:12 had given Moses a sign he could only check after the errand was done, that ye shall serve God upon this mountain, and this is where it comes due. The mountain is called Horeb at 3:1 and again at 17:6, and it is Sinai from this verse onward.

Exodus 19:3-4

The covenant opens with history rather than with law, and the first thing God says at Sinai is what he has already done. Eagles' wings is the figure, and Deuteronomy 32:11 works it out at length, the eagle stirring up her nest and fluttering over her young and bearing them on her wings. The verse names the destination as God himself, brought you unto myself, and the land goes unmentioned.

Exodus 19:5

Peculiar treasure occurs here for the first time in Scripture. The Hebrew behind it, segullah, is used of a personal hoard a king keeps apart from the public treasury, so the word carries private ownership rather than rank. The sentence then widens where a reader expects it to narrow, for all the earth is mine, which sets the choice of one nation inside a claim on every nation.

Exodus 19:6

Kingdom of priests and an holy nation both occur here for the first time in Scripture, and both are said of the whole people at a point where Israel has no priesthood at all. 1 Peter 2:9 gathers the same phrases and lays them on the church, turning kingdom of priests into a royal priesthood and keeping an holy nation word for word. Revelation 1:6 and 5:10 use the figure again of those redeemed to God.

Exodus 19:7-8

Moses lays the words before the elders and the answer comes back from the whole assembly at once, All that the LORD hath spoken we will do. The same promise is given twice more in chapter 24, at 24:3 and again at 24:7, where they add and be obedient. Chapter 32 falls between that promise and the building of the tabernacle, and the text sets the two beside each other without comment.

Exodus 19:9

The cloud that led them out of Egypt at 13:21 settles on the mountain, and God gives a reason for the thickness of it. The people are to hear him speaking with Moses so that they will believe Moses afterward, which makes the appearing a matter of credentials as much as of glory. 1 Corinthians 10:1-2 looks back on that cloud and the sea together and calls them a baptism unto Moses.

Exodus 19:10-11

Two days of preparation are ordered before God comes down, and the outward sign of it is washed clothing. Sanctify first occurs in Scripture at 13:2, of the firstborn spared in Egypt, and here it reaches a whole nation that has neither priesthood nor tabernacle yet. The third day is fixed in advance, so the people know the hour of the appearing and can count toward it.

Exodus 19:12

A line is drawn around the mountain and the penalty for crossing it is death, which is the first thing done at Sinai before a single commandment is spoken. Hebrews 12:18-24 takes this scene as its own picture of the mount that might be touched and that burned with fire, and sets mount Sion beside it. The writer of Hebrews quotes the fear of this chapter and answers it with a second mountain rather than by softening the first.

Exodus 19:13

Trumpet occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and the first thing it sounds is a summons to come up to the mountain the people have just been forbidden to touch. The same instrument marks the feast at Leviticus 23:24, brings down Jericho in Joshua 6, and stands at the last trump in 1 Corinthians 15:52. The verse also puts the offender out of reach, since no hand is to touch him and he is stoned or shot through from a distance.

Exodus 19:14-15

Moses carries out the order and the narrator reports it in the words of the command, sanctified the people, and they washed their clothes. Verse 15 adds a third instruction that the chapter has not recorded God giving, come not at your wives, and it stands as Moses' own word to the people. Paul writes of a husband and wife consenting to a season apart for prayer at 1 Corinthians 7:5, and the two passages are often read together.

Exodus 19:16-17

Everything promised for the third day arrives at once, thunders, lightnings, a thick cloud and a trumpet loud enough that the whole camp trembled. Moses then brings the people out of the camp to meet with God, so the trembling and the approach happen in the same hour. They stand at the nether part of the mount, inside the line drawn at verse 12 and as near as that line allows.

Exodus 19:18-19

The mountain smokes and quakes, and the reason the verse gives is that the LORD descended upon it in fire. Genesis 19:28 used the same figure of the smoke over Sodom going up as the smoke of a furnace, so Sinai is described in the language of a judgment the reader of the Torah has already met. Then the trumpet grows louder, Moses speaks, and God answered him by a voice, which is the first exchange the people hear rather than only watch.

Exodus 19:20-21

God comes down to the top of the mountain and calls Moses up, and the first thing he says to him there is to go down again. The warning names curiosity as the danger, lest they break through unto the LORD to gaze, rather than rebellion or attack. Moses spends the whole chapter climbing and descending, and that traffic between the two is the office he holds.

Exodus 19:22-23

Priests are addressed at Sinai seven chapters before Aaron and his sons are consecrated in chapter 29, and readers have long divided over who they are. Adam Clarke argues from this verse that sacrifice and a priestly office already existed in Israel, since Moses had asked Pharaoh for leave to sacrifice; others read the word as reaching forward to the priesthood Moses is about to be given instructions for. Moses answers that the bounds are already set and the mount already sanctified, and the charge is repeated to him anyway.

Exodus 19:24-25

Aaron is named to come up with Moses, which is the first step toward the place he is given in chapters 28 and 29. The chapter closes with Moses going down and speaking to the people, and the next words in the book are God's own at 20:1. Sinai is arranged so that Israel hears the ten commandments with the mountain burning in front of it and a mediator standing between.