Exodus 24:12-18 has the theme of sealing or ratifying the Covenant. Chapter 24 is organized to suggest that diverse groups, according to their status, ascended the mountain to various levels. No one accompanies Moses in the P document. This event consisted of Moses going up on the mountain to receive the instructions for constructing the Tabernacle, which will be seen in 25-31 in which the Lord will dwell among the Israelites and give Moses laws, and where they will worship the Lord. The Lord will also give Moses the covenant to put in the Ark.[1] With one "close encounter" behind him, Moses once again receives a private message from God that sets him apart from the other leaders. 12 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain (Sinai).[2] The invitation is the equivalent of entering the "Holy of Holies" in the later temple tradition. In the context of the canon, the Lord has already told Moses to do so in Exodus 24:1. These verses follow the brief account of the covenant meal between the people of Israel, represented by Moses and their elders, and the deity in 24:9-11. Moses’ return to the peaks of Mount Sinai for an exclusive meeting with Yahweh, (Exodus 24:12-18), is another of the several instances in the life story of Israel’s pre-eminent prophet and lawgiver emphasizing his role as unique intercessor for the chosen people (see Exodus 19:20; 20:21; 24:1-11). No one in the history of Israel enjoyed the company of the divine as directly, regularly, and productively as Moses. The Hebrews never developed a Moses-centered religion. How is it that Moses himself escaped virtual deification? Second, the Lord tells Moses and wait (hawah) there. The period of waiting — of being — is probably a combination of purification and incubation that prepares Moses for the revelatory experience. Third, And I will give you the tablets of stone. Despite their prominence in religious tradition, the “tablets of stone” are referred to only seven times in the biblical text (here and at Exodus 31:18; 34:1, 4; Deuteronomy 10:1, 3; 1 Kings 8:9). The Jewish and Christian iconographic traditions have represented the tablets as containing only the Ten Commandments (or “words” as the Hebrew text of Exodus 20:1 states). However, in the biblical record, only Exodus 34:28 limits the contents of the tablets specifically to these commandments. Elsewhere the tablets contain the words of “the covenant” (Exodus 31:18; 34:1), of which the Ten Commandments were only a small portion. Stone was normally used only for permanent inscriptions, such as royal and ceremonial inscriptions, boundary inscriptions, and treaties. An Aramaic decree from the 600s is on a square stone tablet, 15-16 inches square and inscribed on both sides could have contained the decalogue. The Lord will give the tablets of stone with, in a literary hendiadys,[3] the law (torah) and the commandment (mitzvah),[4] which I have written for the purpose of their instruction (le-horotam), based on the same root as torah.” 13So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, who apparently accompanied Moses part way, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. The first stage of the ascent is Moses taking Joshua, his assistant (minister, chaplain), with him to the mountain of God. Sending Moses on his way while establishing a proper pecking order for Israel's elites (already halfway up the mountain) is the delicate task of verses 13-14. Although unmentioned until now, Moses' hand-picked "assistant" (or "minister" or even "chaplain") Joshua is suddenly beside him, ready to accompany Moses on the first leg of this extended journey. Clearly, Joshua (whom the tradition also singles out as Moses' assistant in Exodus 33:11; Numbers 11:28; Joshua 1:1) is in a different league than the rest of the priests and elders mentioned in this text. By squiring Moses in his climb to elevated status, Joshua both foreshadows his own special role as Moses' successor, and he avoids being associated with the ruckus and ruin that will greet Moses when he finally descends to the Israelite encampment at the foot of the mountain (chapter 32). This mention foreshadows the prominent role he will play in the subsequent narrative of the Israelites’ journey toward and into Canaan. Joshua, whose name means “Yahweh saves,” was renamed thus by Moses from his given name, Hoshea (“Salvation,” Numbers 13:16). He first appears in the biblical record as a military leader against the Amalekites (Exodus 17:8-13), and he achieved considerable prominence apart from his role as Moses’ lieutenant (see Numbers 13:8). Although clearly subordinate to Moses in biblical narratives, Joshua gradually becomes Moses-like in his leadership of the chosen people. He, like Moses, receives divine assurance of the divine presence in his work (Joshua 1:5). He, like Moses, sends out reconnaissance troops (Joshua 2). He, like Moses, leads the people across a body of water to symbolize departure and arrival (Joshua 4:23). He, like Moses, leads the people in certain rituals (Joshua 5:11-12); and so on. It was entirely fitting, therefore, that this rising leader should accompany Moses in receiving further divine instruction. 14 To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us, until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you. Whoever has a dispute may go to them.” They are to perform the duties of Moses in his absence. This Hur (five persons bear the name in the Hebrew Bible) assisted in the Israelites’ battle against the Amalekites by holding up Moses’ arms (Exodus 17:10-12). In recognition of this service, he was with Aaron as one of Moses’ deputies for deciding judicial cases (“whoever has a dispute,” v. 14). It is Aaron, not the absent Joshua, who bears responsibility for the people's rebellious and willful disobedience (see especially 32:17). The passage does not make clear just how high up Joshua ascended with Moses.
The second stage of the ascent is Moses entering the cloud-covered mountain. 15 Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud in which the Presence of the Lord is manifest covered the mountain. The cloud has led the fleeing Israelites to this point. 16 The glory or presence of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, for the first time localizing the glory of the Lord, with the instructions in chapters 25-32 being the construction of the Tabernacle (mishkan or abode, to which the Lord will transfer the divine Presence and accompany Israel) and the cloud covered it for six days. The Tabernacle will become a portable Mount Sinai, the locus of the presence of the Lord. This Presence or Glory is the main manifestation of the divine in the Priestly thought.
Where did Moses encounter the Divine Presence? He found God in the fog. Moses was in a fog for six days! But so was God! For some of us, it might seem like six years. But God has promised to be in the fog with us! Sometimes, when you least expect it --- nothing happens! A tremendous amount of life is just waiting. Let me get concrete: Over the course of your lifetime, you will spend at least five years waiting in lines and two years just trying to contact people by telephone. You can also look forward to spending eight months opening nothing but junk mail and six whole months sitting and staring at traffic lights that refuse to turn green. In fact, if to get to work, your time behind the wheel averages 60 minutes a day, you will spend six 40-hour workweeks just getting yourself to and from your workplace.[5] Now that takes endurance!!! What you do with yourself while you are "enduring" the daily grind to your soul and sanity of these daily tests reveals just how faithful you are to God. A tremendous amount of life is just waiting. Being faithful when nothing much is happening is what it means to "keep the faith." Eric Hoffer, the American dock worker philosopher, shrewdly observed that "the feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is, on the contrary, born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else - we are the busiest people in the world."[6]
[1] It does not take a microscope to find the fissures and cracks that craze the fragile coherence of Exodus 24. Scholars have identified this OT text as a critical hinge moment in the lives of the Israelites. The beginnings of a religious pecking order are discernable in Exodus 24. At least Exodus 24:15-18, and perhaps the entire chapter, should be viewed as being organized by a priestly group of editors who use two images to convey their organizational developments and concerns.
In order to deal with a perplexing cast of characters, the editors of this text quickly introduced one group and then another until all the pertinent players had been called and accounted for and their positions relative to one another delineated. While the undifferentiated crowd had been repeatedly warned to keep its distance from the altitudinous heights and highs of this holy mountain, chapter 24 now carefully leads a select few farther up the slopes.
The passage is a composite. We know this because verses 9-11 follow directly on verses 1-2, and since Moses is already on the mountain (v. 9) when he is instructed in verse 12 to “Come up to me on the mountain,” it appears that the second command to ascend the mountain follows naturally on v 8. The text comes from the earliest Pentateuchal sources — the Yahwist and the Elohist — and has been edited into its current form by the post-exilic redactors of the Pentateuch. The vision of God in verses 9-11 is conspicuous in its use of the generic Hebrew term for God, `elohim, (thus the “Elohist”), whereas the surrounding narrative uses the Israelite-specific name for God, Yahweh/the Lord (thus the “Yahwist”). Verses 12-18 begins with the command by the Lord for Moses to “come up to me on the mountain” (v. 12), which repeats a command already issued to Moses in verse 1 to “come up to the LORD,” a command whose execution is reported in verse 9. Three interpretations of this apparent repetition present themselves. The first is that Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and the 70 elders have descended the mountain after the ritual covenant meal reported in verses 9-11 without comment by the biblical text, and that Moses is being summoned to the mountain a second time. Another possibility, favored by the religious tradition, is that Moses is being summoned in verse 12 to come up farther on the mountain than his companions and to draw nearer than they to the divine presence. The third possibility, a scholarly interpretation, is that the text is a composite of two accounts — the summons to a ritual covenant meal (vv. 9-11) and the summons to Moses to receive the written record of the oral revelation (vv. 1-2, 12-18). There is no conflict between the latter two interpretations; they are simply two ways of looking at the same text.
The episode that constitutes this passage is part of the story of the revelation of God’s will to Israel at Mount Sinai, a large block of narrative, legal and liturgical material stretching from Exodus 19:1 to the end of chapter 24. The arrangement of this diverse body of material, which includes the Ten Commandments (20:1-17) and the Book of the Covenant (24:1-8), seems to fall into two large parts: a body of social, legal and religious laws (20:1–23:33) framed by a covenant by which the people bind themselves to the deity and that deity’s revealed stipulations (19:1-25; 24:1-11).
[2] The religious traditions effluent from the Hebrew Bible identifies this mountain, of course, as Sinai. The biblical tradition itself, however, preserves the traditions of two mountains as the sites of revelations to Moses. The first mentioned is Mount Horeb, on which Moses’ series of revelations begins with his encounter with the burning bush (Exodus 3:1). This mountain, identified as “Horeb, the mountain of God” (Exodus 3:1; 4:27; 18:5; I Kings 8:9; etc.), is identified exclusively in the book of Deuteronomy as the mountain of revelation (except for the blessing of Moses in Deuteronomy 33:2). In the book of Exodus, Sinai is the more frequent appellation for the mountain on which Moses receives revelation (e.g., 19:2, 3, 12, 13, 14, 16, etc.). Sinai is also the name of the wilderness through which the Israelites must travel (Exodus 19:1, 2; etc.). Sinai is never directly called “the mountain of God,” but is usually referred to simply as “the mountain,” as here. Its location, like the location of the wilderness of the same name, is unknown, although tradition since the fourth century A.D. has identified Mount Sinai with Jebel Musa (“Mount Moses”) in the southern Sinai Peninsula.
[3] The phrase is an instance of literary hendiadys, in which two nouns are conjoined to express a single idea (often translated in English as a single noun modified by an adjective formed from the second noun).
[4] The singular “commandment” in an unusual phrase that occurs only here and at II Kings 17:37 and II Chronicles 14:4. Ordinarily, the plural “commandments” is used (as at Leviticus 27:34; II Kings 18:6; II Chronicles 31:21 and elsewhere). Such passages do not usually join commandment with the word “law,” but rather in some combination of commandments, statutes, ordinances and decrees (as at Deuteronomy 5:31; 28:45; 30:16; Numbers 36:13; Nehemiah 1:7; etc.) or, more commonly, in the set phrase, “the commandments of the LORD (your God)” (e.g., Numbers 15:39; Deuteronomy 8:6; 10:13; 11:27; II Chronicles 24:20; Ezra 7:11; etc.).
[5](taken from Jeff Davidson, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Managing Time [New York: Alpha Books, 1995.]).
[6] -Bob Buford, Halftime (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), 80.
[7]
Good study liked the take on nothing happening
ReplyDeleteThank you!
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