Sinai and the covenant

Three months separate the sea from Sinai, and these three months form the training of a people: God feeds Israel in the desert, gives it drink, defends it, then leads it to the foot of the mountain where he makes a covenant with it, gives it the ten commandments and seals the whole in blood. At the foot of that same mountain, the people fall into idolatry; Moses’ intercession obtains pardon, and the covenant is renewed.

The waters of Marah

Three days after the sea, the people marched in the desert without finding water. They came to Marah, where the water could not be drunk because it was bitter, and they murmured against Moses. Moses cried out to the Lord, who showed him a piece of wood; he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. “There God gave the people a statute and a rule, and there he put them to the test” Exodus 15:25 From this first stage, before the great Law of Sinai, God begins to order the life of his people, and he binds that obedience to a promise: if you listen to the voice of the Lord your God, none of the diseases of Egypt will come upon you, “for I am the Lord who heals you” Exodus 15:26 Then the people camped at Elim, near twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees.

The desert will be a school: each lack will put the people to the test, and each test will teach the same thing, that Israel’s life hangs on God alone. At the first thirst, God reveals himself under a new name: the one who heals.

The manna, the bread of heaven

In the desert of Sin, a month after the departure, hunger made the whole assembly murmur against Moses and Aaron: in Egypt, at least, they sat before pots of meat and ate bread to the full; you have brought us out into this desert to make this whole assembly die of hunger. God answered: “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. The people will go out and gather day by day the portion of the day, that I may test them: will they walk in my law, or not?” Exodus 16:4, and he announced to those starving people the two foods they longed for, meat and bread: “In the evening you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread, and you shall know that I am the Lord, your God” Exodus 16:12 In the evening, indeed, quails came down on the camp: thus came the meat announced. In the morning, a fine layer lay on the ground, like frost: that was the bread. The sons of Israel said to one another: what is it? In Hebrew, man hou (מָן הוּא), and this question became the name of the bread: the manna, man (מָן). Moses told them: “It is the bread the Lord gives you to eat” Exodus 16:15 It was like coriander seed, white, tasting of honey cakes. Each gathered according to his hunger, day after day; what was kept for the next day filled with worms and rotted. On the sixth day the portion was double, for the next day was “a day of rest, a sabbath consecrated to the Lord” Exodus 16:23: God gave on the eve enough to cross it, and that portion, kept till morning, did not rot. Israel ate the manna forty years, to the borders of Canaan.

This bread carries a figure that Jesus himself will unveil: “Your fathers ate the manna in the desert, and they died. I am the living bread come down from heaven: if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever, and the bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world” John 6:49, 51 The manna is the figure of the Eucharist, the true bread of heaven given each day to the people of God on the march.

The water of the rock and the battle against Amalek

The people then camped at Rephidim, a stage of the desert where there was no water to drink, and the quarrel broke out: why have you made us come up from Egypt, to make us die of thirst with our children and our flocks? God told Moses to take his staff and walk before the people: “Behold, I will stand before you on the rock, at Horeb; you shall strike the rock, water will come out of it, and the people will drink” Exodus 17:6 Moses did so before the eyes of the elders, and he named that place Massah and Meribah, in Hebrew Massah (מַסָּה), “the Test”, and Meribah (מְרִיבָה), “the Quarrel”, because the people had tested the Lord by saying: is the Lord in our midst, or not?

God had announced that he would stand before Moses on the rock, and his visible presence accompanied the people then in the pillar of cloud and fire, which did not withdraw from before them. Paul names who that presence was that accompanied Israel and gave it drink: “they drank from a spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ” 1 Corinthians 10:4: Christ, God present in the midst of his people, was the true source of that water.

At Rephidim again, Amalek, a nomad people of the desert descended from Esau (Genesis 36:12), came to attack Israel. Joshua led the battle in the plain, and Moses went up the hill with the staff of God: “when Moses held his hand raised, Israel was the stronger; when he let his hand fall, Amalek was the stronger” Exodus 17:11 Joshua fights in the plain, and the outcome follows Moses’ hands on the hill: the raised hands are the prayer that sustains the battle. And prayer itself knows weariness: Moses’ arms weaken, he is made to sit on a stone, and Aaron and Hur support his hands, one on one side, one on the other, until sunset. The mediator himself needs to be supported.

The counsel of Jethro

Jethro, the priest of Midian who had welcomed Moses during his exile and had given him his daughter in marriage, came to find him in the desert. He brought back to him Zipporah, Moses’ wife, whom Moses had sent away, along with their two sons, Gershom and Eliezer, the latter so named because “the God of my father helped me and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh” Exodus 18:4 and he rejoiced at all that God had done for Israel. The next day, he saw Moses sit alone to judge the people from morning to evening, all coming to him for their disputes, and he warned him: “You will certainly wear yourself out, you and the people who are with you; the task is beyond your strength, you cannot do it alone” Exodus 18:18 He gave him this counsel: that Moses remain, himself, the man who brings the cases before God and teaches the people the way to follow, and that judges be established under him for the rest: to choose from among all the people “able men who fear God, men of integrity, enemies of greed” Exodus 18:21, and to set them at the head of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens, to settle the small cases themselves and refer to Moses only the great ones. “Moses listened to the voice of his father-in-law and did all that he had said” Exodus 18:24

Moses speaks with God, and he listens to the counsel of a man: the wisdom of God passes also through the mouth of men, and Moses has the humility to receive it. The counsel gives Israel its first lasting institution, a charge of government distributed by degrees.

The meeting at Sinai

In the third month, Israel camped before the mountain of Sinai, and God there proposed his covenant, recalling first what he had done: “You have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” Exodus 19:4 Then he spoke the election: “Now, if you listen to my voice and keep my covenant, you will be my own people among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” Exodus 19:5-6 The whole people answered: all that the Lord has said, we will do. God then ordered the meeting to be prepared: two days for the people to sanctify themselves and wash their garments, “for on the third day the Lord will come down, before the eyes of all the people, on the mountain of Sinai” Exodus 19:11, and a limit was traced around the mountain, which none was to cross on pain of death. On the third day in the morning, there were thunders, lightnings and a very loud trumpet blast, and a thick cloud covered the mountain. It is the same presence that guided the people in the pillar of cloud and fire: it stands now on the mountain, as God had announced, “I am going to come to you in a thick cloud” Exodus 19:9 God came down on the mountain in the fire; the smoke rose like that of a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled.

Grace precedes the demand: God recalls first what he has done, the eagles’ wings that carried the people to him, and proposes his covenant afterwards. And Israel is chosen from among all peoples for the benefit of all: a kingdom of priests, a nation set apart to carry God to the world, awaiting the hour when the revelation would reach all the nations. God reveals himself by degrees: he made himself known to the patriarchs through his promises, to Moses through his Name at the bush, and he crosses here a new stage by binding himself to a whole people through a covenant. Peter will take up these words for the Church, where this election finds its fulfilment: “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people God has acquired for himself” 1 Peter 2:9

The Decalogue, the ten commandments

From the midst of the fire, God spoke the ten commandments, and the first lays the foundation of all: “I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before my face” Exodus 20:2-3 Then follow the prohibition of carved images and of the name of God spoken in vain, the sabbath to be kept holy, the father and the mother to be honoured, then the commandments that guard the life of the neighbour: you shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet. Before the thunders and the smoking mountain, the people stood at a distance and asked for a mediator: “Speak to us, you, and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, lest we die” Exodus 20:19 Moses answered: “Do not be afraid: it is to test you that God has come, and that his fear may remain before you, so that you do not sin” Exodus 20:20

The Law begins with a reminder of the salvation: “who brought you out of the house of bondage”. God delivers first, and commands afterwards; the ten commandments are the charter of an already freed people, the way to remain in the freedom received, and the deliverance was never the reward of their observance. The two tablets speak the two loves: the first commandments order all that concerns God, the following all that concerns the neighbour. The test of which Moses speaks is a formation: God makes his greatness seen to engrave his fear in the heart of the people, a fear that is a guard against sin.

The blood of the covenant

After the ten commandments, God gave Moses a set of laws that unfold their application: worship, servants, damages, feasts (Exodus 21-23). Moses reported to the people all these words and put them in writing: this is the book of the covenant. In the morning, he built an altar at the foot of the mountain, a table of stones raised to offer the sacrifices, and he set up twelve stones for the twelve tribes of Israel, the lines of the twelve sons of Jacob; young men offered holocausts and immolated bulls as peace offerings. Moses collected the blood of the victims: he poured half of it on the altar, then read the book of the covenant to the people, who answered: “All that the Lord has said, we will do and we will obey” Exodus 24:7; and he sprinkled the people with the other half: “This is the blood of the covenant the Lord has made with you on all these words” Exodus 24:8 Moses then went up with Aaron, his sons and seventy elders: “they saw the God of Israel; under his feet it was like a pavement of sapphire, pure as the sky itself” Exodus 24:10, and God did not stretch out his hand against them: they saw God, and they ate and drank.

The same blood touches the altar, which represents God, and the people: the covenant unites the two in one same life. As for the vision of the elders, the text weighs each word. To see God, for a man, exceeds the strength of the creature: God will say it himself to Moses, “man cannot see me and live” Exodus 33:20; that is why the people expected to die if God spoke to them. The elders therefore do not contemplate the being of God: they receive a manifestation of his glory, this pavement pure as the sky, the floor of sapphire on which God stands, like the throne of sapphire that Ezekiel will see in his turn (Ezekiel 1:26). The wonder is told in one phrase: God did not stretch out his hand against them. Covered by the blood of the covenant just poured out, men eat and drink before God and remain alive: the covenant ends in a meal, and this meal before God announces the banquet where God will give himself. It is this blood that Christ will name in instituting the Eucharist: “this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, poured out for the multitude for the remission of sins” Matthew 26:28

Then Moses rose with Joshua, his servant, and told the elders to wait for him with Aaron and Hur. The cloud covered the mountain, and the glory of the Lord appeared to the eyes of the people like a devouring fire on the summit; Moses entered into the midst of the cloud and remained there forty days and forty nights. During this stay, God prescribed to him the Dwelling, the sanctuary Israel was to build so that God might dwell in the midst of the camp, and he gave him the two stone tablets of the testimony, on which the ten commandments were written by the finger of God.

The sin of the golden calf

The people, seeing that Moses delayed in coming down, gathered around Aaron: “Come, make us a god who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from Egypt, we do not know what has become of him” Exodus 32:1 Aaron received the gold rings of the people and fashioned a calf of molten metal, and they said: “Israel, here is your god, who brought you up from the land of Egypt” Exodus 32:4 An altar was raised, sacrifices were offered, and the people sat down to eat and drink, then rose to revel. God told Moses to come down: “I see that this people is a stiff-necked people. Now, let me be: that my anger may blaze against them and consume them; but of you I will make a great nation” Exodus 32:9-10

At the very foot of the mountain, while God gives the covenant, the people break it: the first commandment, you shall have no other gods, is violated first. The psalmist will tell the measure of the exchange: “They exchanged their glory for the figure of an ox that eats grass” Psalm 106:20 And Isaiah will paint the same absurdity: a man cuts wood, “he burns half of it in the fire; on the embers he cooks his meat and is filled; and from what remains he makes himself a god, his idol: he prostrates before it and prays to it: deliver me, for you are my god” Isaiah 44:16-17

The intercession of Moses

“That my anger may blaze against them and consume them; but of you I will make a great nation” Exodus 32:10 Moses refused and pleaded. He set against the anger two arguments: the glory of God before Egypt, which would say that the Lord brought his people out to make them perish in the mountains, and the sworn word: “Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by yourself: I will multiply your posterity like the stars of heaven” Exodus 32:13 “And the Lord repented of the harm he had spoken of doing to his people” Exodus 32:14 Moses came down, saw the calf and the dances, and his anger blazed: he broke the two tablets at the foot of the mountain, burned the calf and ground it to powder. Then he stood at the gate of the camp and cried: “To me, those who are for the Lord!” Exodus 32:26; the sons of Levi gathered around him, and Moses passed on to them the order of God: that each gird his sword, cross the camp and strike the guilty, sparing neither brother, companion nor kin; about three thousand men, among those who had worshipped the calf, fell that day. The next day, Moses went back up to God: “Ah! this people has committed a great sin: they have made themselves a god of gold. Now pardon their sin; if not, blot me out of your book that you have written” Exodus 32:31-32

Before the fault, Moses’ anger went beyond measure: he broke the very tablets God had written with his finger, and God will remind him of it by ordering him to cut two new ones with his own hands, “like the first, which you broke” Exodus 34:1 Before God, on the other hand, Moses stood at his full stature as mediator: he refused to be saved alone, and asked to be blotted out rather than see the people perish. This intercession prefigures Christ, who will do what Moses could only offer: to give his life in reality so that the people might be pardoned.

The tent of meeting

God answered Moses: “It is the one who has sinned against me that I will blot out of my book” Exodus 32:33, and he struck the people with a scourge because of the calf. Then he ordered them to go up towards the promised land, and the guidance changed hands. God had promised to make march before his people the Angel in whom is his Name: “Behold, I send an angel before you, to guard you on the way… do not resist him, for he will not pardon your transgression, because my name is in him” Exodus 23:20-21, that Angel of the Lord who is God himself coming with his own. After the fault, he offers no more than an angel, a messenger who would march before the people without God being in their midst: “but I will not go up in your midst, for you are a stiff-necked people, and I would annihilate you on the way” Exodus 33:3 The people could therefore keep everything, a heavenly escort and the promised land at the end; everything, except God himself. At these words, they took up mourning, and no one put on his ornaments.

Moses then took a tent and pitched it outside the camp, at some distance; he called it the tent of meeting, and whoever sought the Lord went there. When Moses entered it, the pillar of cloud came down and stood at the entrance, all the people rose and prostrated, each at the entrance of his own tent, “and the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” Exodus 33:11 There, Moses pleaded for God to take back his place in the midst of the people, and God answered: “My face will go with you, and I will give you rest” Exodus 33:14 Moses held him to this word: “If your face does not come with us, do not make us leave this place. By what will it be known that I have found grace in your eyes, I and your people, if not by your walking with us?” Exodus 33:15-16 The presence of God in the midst of his people is the only good that distinguishes Israel from all the nations: Moses refuses to leave without it, and he obtains it.

The renewal of the covenant

Emboldened by this grace, Moses asked for more: “Show me your glory” Exodus 33:18 God promised to make all his goodness pass before him and to proclaim his Name, and he set the limit of every creature: “You will not be able to see my face, for man cannot see me and live” Exodus 33:20; then he designated the place: “Here is a place near me; you will stand on the rock” Exodus 33:21: he would place Moses in a cleft of that rock of the mountain, cover him with his hand while his glory passed, then withdraw his hand, and Moses would see him from behind, his face remaining invisible. These words say in the language of man a reality that exceeds man: the face is God seen as he is in himself, a vision of which no living being has the strength; the back, what the creature can grasp of God after his passage, the trace and the radiance of his glory; the hand that covers, the protection of God himself, who veils his friend so that the glory does not consume him.

On God’s order, Moses cut two stone tablets like the first and went back up the mountain in the morning. And the promise was fulfilled: “The Lord came down in the cloud, stood there with him and proclaimed the name of the Lord” Exodus 34:5: “The Lord, the Lord, God merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, rich in goodness and faithfulness” Exodus 34:6 On the morrow of his people’s worst fault, God names himself by his mercy: the deepest revelation of his heart answers the sin he pardons. At once Moses bowed to the ground and prostrated, and he interceded again: that the Lord walk in our midst, pardon our iniquities and our sins, and make us his inheritance. Moses remained again forty days and forty nights with God, without eating bread or drinking water, and the ten commandments were written anew on the tablets.

When he came down, the two tablets in his hand, the skin of his face had become radiant while he spoke with God, without his knowing it. The people feared to approach him, and Moses covered his face with a veil. Paul will read this veil as the figure of the Old Testament read without Christ: “as soon as hearts turn to the Lord, the veil is removed” 2 Corinthians 3:16