Chapter 25: Covenant at Sinai

Study notes

Yahweh descends on Mount Sinai in fire and smoke, and the people, shaking at the thunder and the horn, ask Moses to speak with them in place of God. When Moses tells the people what Yahweh has said, they agree to do it, and later he enters the cloud on the mountain for forty days and nights.

From Exodus 19:17–20 (KoS), Exodus 20:18–19 (KoS), Exodus 24:3–4 (KoS), Exodus 24:15–18 (KoS).

These notes and questions are original study helps written for this site, not scripture. The verses shown with each question are quoted from the Kingdoms of Scripture Bible.

Notice and discuss

Read each passage, then think about the question on your own or talk it over with others. No answers are collected.

1. According to these verses, what will Israel be if the people listen and keep the covenant?

   You saw what I did to Egypt, and I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you listen, listen to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured holding out of all the peoples, because all the land is mine. You shall be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you shall speak to the sons of Israel.”

   Exodus 19:4–6 (KoS)

   Note · Translation Segullah is a personal treasure, a holding kept for oneself. “A treasured holding” is printed.

2. What reason is given for keeping the seventh day as a sabbath with no work?

   Six days you shall work and do all your work. The seventh day is a sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall do no work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male slave, or your female slave, or your animal, or your sojourner who is in your gates. Because in six days Yahweh made the sky and the earth, the sea and everything in them, and he rested on the seventh day. Therefore Yahweh blessed the sabbath day and set it apart.

   Exodus 20:9–11 (KoS)

3. What do Moses, Aaron, and the elders see when they go up, and what do they do there?

   Moses went up, and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. They saw the God of Israel, and under his feet something like a pavement of sapphire tile, and like the substance of the sky for clarity. Against the nobles of the sons of Israel he did not stretch out his hand. They beheld God, and they ate and drank.

   Exodus 24:9–11 (KoS)

   Note · Translation Livnat ha-sappir is a pavement of sapphire, tile-work. Etzem ha-shamayim latohar is the very body of the sky, clear. The sight is printed as the comparison the Hebrew gives. Nothing further is described.

   Note · Translation Atzilim are the nobles, the leading men who went up. “Corners” is a possible sense of the root, and it is not printed.