Exodus 19:1-25

Preparation for the Giving of the Law

1. The same day] the 15th day of the month: cp. Exodus 12:18; Exodus 12:29; Exodus 16:1. Marching slowly, with long halts at the various stations on the route, the host took two months to traverse the 150 m between Egypt and Sinai. Here they remained eleven months (see Numbers 10:11), during which time the nation entered into a formal covenant with Jehovah on the basis of the moral law received from God by Moses, and promulgated by him.

Wilderness of Sinai] This must not be confounded with the 'wilderness of Sin' (see on Exodus 16:1). The wilderness of Sinai is generally identified with the modern Wady Er-Rahah, a plain fully 2 m. long by half-a-m. wide, 'enclosed between two precipitous mountain ranges of black and yellow granite, and having at its end the prodigious mountain block of Ras es-Sufsafeh,' which Dean Stanley and others take to be the mount on which the Law was given. Ras es-Sufsafeh is some 7,000 ft. in height, and rises sheer from the plain 'like a huge altar.' Some, however, believe that the actual mount of the Law was another peak of the same mountain mass S. of Sufsafeh, called Jebel Musa, the traditional site. The whole district has been described as one of the most awe-inspiring regions on the face of the earth, and as such it accorded well with the dread revelation of the divine majesty here given to Israel.