Acts 7:30

πληρωθέντων, see Acts 7:23, cf. Exodus 7:7, “fulfilled,” R.V. ὤφθη, Acts 7:2, so the second fundamental revelation of God to Israel took place in the wilderness far away from the Promised Land (Weiss), see also Acts 7:33. τεσσαράκοντα, cf. Acts 1:3. Σινᾶ : there is no contradiction between this and Exodus 3:1, where the appearance is said to take place in Horeb, for whilst in the N.T. and Josephus Sinai only is named for the place of the law-giving, in the O.T. the two names are interchanged, cf. also Sir 48:7. According to Hamburger the two names are identical, signifying in a narrower sense only one mountain, the historical mountain of the giving of the law, but in a wider sense given to a whole group of mountains. Thus Hamburger declines to accept the view that Horeb was the name of the whole ridge of mountain-cluster, whilst Sinai specially denotes the mountain of the law-giving, since Horeb is also used for the same event (cf. Exodus 3:1; Exodus 17:6; Exodus 33:6), Real-Encyclopädie des Judentums, i., 7, 940. See also B.D. 1, “Sinai,” Wendt, edition (1899), in loco; Schaff-Herzog, Encyclopœdia, iv., “Sinai” (also for literature); and Grimm-Thayer, sub v. According to Sayce, Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 263 ff., Sinai is a mountain of Seir, rather than of the Sinaitic peninsula so called. The same writer lays stress upon the fact that Sinai is associated with Seir and Edom, Deuteronomy 33:2; Judges 5:4-5, and maintains that it is nowhere in the O.T. transported to the Sinaitic peninsula of our modern maps. The word Σινᾶ is an indeclinable noun τό (sc., ὄρος); Josephus τὸ Σιναῖον and τὸ Σιναῖον ὄρος; Grimm-Thayer, Winer-Schmiedel, p. 91, Blass, Gram., 8, 32; and see also Sayce, u. s., p. 268, 269, and Patriarchal Palestine, p. 259, who renders as adjective “(the mountain) which belongs to Sin,” i.e., like desert which it overlooked, to the worship of the Babylonian Moon-God Sin in that region. ἄγγελος : in Exodus 3:2 “the angel of the Lord,” but in Acts 7:7 “the Lord said,” so here in Acts 7:31 “the voice of the Lord said,” cf. Acts 7:33. For the same mode of expression cf. Acts 27:23 with Acts 23:11. In this Angel, the Angel of the Lord, cf. Exodus 3:2 with Acts 7:6; Acts 7:14 and Genesis 22:11 with Acts 7:12; the Angel of the Presence, Exodus 33:11, cf. Isaiah 63:9 (Acts 7:38 below), although Jewish interpreters varied, the Fathers saw the Logos, the Eternal Word of the Father. See references in Felten, in loco, and Liddon, Bampton Lectures, Lect. ii., and “Angel,” B.D. 2. Otherwise we can only say that Jehovah Himself speaks through the Angel (Weiss, Blass, in loco). ἐν φλογὶ πυρὸς βάτου : words interchanged as in LXX A, Exodus 3:2; according to Hebrew πυρὸς ἐκ τοῦ βάτου πυρός here = an adjective, rubus incensus (Blass, Weiss); cf. 2 Thessalonians 1:8, ἐν πυρὶ φλογός. For gender of βάτος see Acts 7:35.