The Mountains of God: Sinai

It was not uncommon for the ancients to believe that their god or gods lived on a mountain. Mount Olympas for the Greek pantheon, Mount Zaphon for Baal. The Israelites did not believe that God, Yahweh, lived on a mountain, but they believed God had sacred places where He revealed Himself. Jacob saw Bethel as such a place (Genesis 28). Moses discovered Mount Sinai to be such a place.

^3:1 One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock far into the wilderness and came to Sinai, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush. Moses stared in amazement. Though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn’t burn up. ³ “This is amazing,” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go see it.” (Exodus 3:1-3)

The Hebrew text actually reads “Horeb, the mountain of Elohim,” and there is some disagreement about whether Horeb and Sinai are different names for the same place, or whether they are adjacent to one another, or whether Horeb is the larger area that includes Sinai, but for all intents and purposes, we may see them as identical. Horeb is called the mountain of God and Sinai is called the mountain of God (Exodus 24:13-16). The glory and fire of Yahweh came down on Horeb and Moses received the ten commandments (Deuteronomy 5), and so with Sinai (Exodus 24).

This is where Yahweh makes a covenant with Israel and gives them the law, when He redeems them from Egypt and brings them to His mountain (Exodus 19). The display of His presence there terrifies the Israelites. Fire on the mountain makes them quake in their sandals and they are afraid to approach it, yet strangely drawn to it (Exodus 19:16,24). Death is threatened to anyone who touches the mountain. Yahweh is trying to make an impression. The law judges us and failure to keep it brings penalty.

And so, when the apostle Paul explains the two covenants of God, the covenant at Sinai and the New covenant, comparing them to two women, Hagar the slave and her mistress Sarah, he writes, “Hagar, represents Mount Sinai where people received the law that enslaved them” (Galatians 4:24). Sinai was a crucial covenant Yahweh made with His people, but Sinai was not the place to stay in our spiritual placement. God had something better in Christ Jesus for us. He fulfilled the law, bore the curse of the law by hanging on a tree, and has set us free from Sinai (Galatians 3:10-14).

O Sacred Mountain, you have fulfilled your purpose. You have shown us our utter failure to keep God’s law and thereby our utter and desperate need for a Savior. We could not approach your heights for fear of death, but now we can approach the throne of God with boldness because our high priest Jesus has been tempted in every way as we have, yet without sinning. He has scaled your mighty ridges and crossed the veil of death for us. Now you are a sacred destination that holds no fear.

Now you are a place we can run to when we are fearful of Jezebel (1 Kings 19:49). Now you are a meeting place with God where we can be restored, corrected, gently rebuked, and set back on our feet. Here we’re told to go back the way we came and finish the things God has for us to do.