Chapter 4 - The Sinai Covenant

The story of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments is truly iconic. And if you watch the film-version of this scene, as I did yesterday, you also realize melodramatic and cheesy the whole things is! No! Not really, just Cecil B. DeMille’s version of it. Velveeta-laden, or not, it’s still an iconic moment in cinema.

But it’s also iconic for the Bible. It’s one of those stories which, even those with only a passing familiarity with the Bible, can recall in terms of its basic points.

“16 On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled. 17 Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. They took their stand at the foot of the mountain. 18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently. 19 As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder. 20 When the Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain, the Lord summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.” (Exodus 19:16-20)

You can picture Charlton Heston with his overdone make-up and bad highlights, straining mightily. It’s a scene that sticks with us because it’s such a defining moment in the life of Israel and in the story of God’s people. In fact, we tend to give this particular event so much weight that we often think of it as the moment, when the people of Israel really became God’s people.

Now here is where I have to admit one of my own personal biases, which my study for this week has helped to correct. Because I’ve realized that more often than not, and quite subconsciously (and sometimes not quite so subconsciously), I tend to view the relationship between God and the people in Hebrew scripture as being transactional in nature. If you will keep all these rules, then I will love you and bless you and keep you warm. Grace is clearly a post-Jesus concept, right? I mean, the world didn’t know about grace until 1517, right? WRONG!!

That is why it’s so important to remember what all has happened up until this point. In the book of Exodus, alone, the list is pretty impressive. Within the span of the first nineteen chapters of Exodus, God has: seen the people’s suffering (Exodus 3:7-9), shared the divine name with Moses and by extension the Israelites (Exodus 3:13-16), shown power stronger than the Egyptian Pharaoh (Exodus 4-15), led the people across the Red Sea into freedom (Exodus 14-15), and provided food and water in the wilderness (Exodus 16-17). Not to mention everything that precedes our story in the book of Genesis. That is, Exodus 20 takes place in a context in which God and the people have already been in relationship with God for generations. The LORD, after all, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The people have already obeyed some of the LORD’s commands, and God has already acted on their behalf.

God has been working on behalf of God’s people the whole time! The opening line to the first commandment makes this perfectly clear. Once more we return to those opening words, “2I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” This is the God of history. It says a great deal about the nature of God, that salvation occurs before the giving of the commandments. The people have already crossed the Red Sea and are already free from their oppressors. The commands represent a response to God’s action already done. Grace, salvation, precedes the law. The 10 Commandments are what we Lutherans would call a faithful response to God’s proffered grace.

In preparing for this sermon, I spent some time reading a Jewish commentary on this text and the author, Robert Alter, pointed out some key things that help us to better understand what is happening here. First, all of the uses of the word “you” are second-person singular. In other words, these commandments are not directed toward the people of Israel as a whole. They are directed at each Hebrew, individually. It’s like God is pointing a divine finger at each and every one of them.

Second, the surrounding cultures would have had gods that had dominion over different spheres: the earth, the sea, the skies. The God of the Hebrews asserts singular superiority over those other deities. “4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Incidentally, this also makes it pretty clear that the ban on graven images applied only to the cultic icons that would have been used by the surrounding pagan cultures. There is one God and one God only.

This covenant is different from the one established with Abraham and Sarah. That was a very one-sided covenant, with God making the commitment to Abraham and Sarah. This covenant now expects a certain standard of behavior from the people, in response to God’s saving action. These behaviors reflect the relationship which God has established with the people. The people are to serve one another as God has served them.

Remember that the covenant with Abraham was pure promise. They were promised that they would be blessed with land and descendants. In return God expected nothing. Now that there are expectations placed upon the people. There will be either blessings or curses in the peoples’ future. Blessings if they are able to maintain the rules of the covenant and curses if they cannot or will not maintain them.

And by the way, the Ten Commandments are not the extent of the rules. They’re really just the preamble, if you will. If you go to the book of Exodus you’ll see that there is a lot more which follows the Commandments. If you have a copy of the Lutheran Study Bible, you can just read through the various headings of the different sections. The 10 Commandments are followed by: The Law concerning the Altar, The Law concerning Slaves (Interesting that a once enslaved people needed to have a law concerning their own slaves, isn’t it?), The Law concerning Violence, The Law concerning Property, Restitution, Social and Religious Law, Justice, Sabbatical Year and Sabbath, The Annual Festivals.

And that’s still not the end. What follows that are all the religious laws. All in all, including our text for today, there are 11 chapters of the book of Exodus devoted to the rules and regulations that were to govern the life of the people of Israel. It was considered so essential to the life of the people that it was to be read publicly in the hearing of all the people, in its entirety, once a year.

In Exodus chapters 20-31, Through Moses, the people receive the 10 Commandments and the Law. They receive all the rules for religious observance. And what’s the very first thing that happens after that?

​1 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” 2 Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:1-4)

Well… that didn’t take long, did it?

Needless to say, God is not happy.

7 The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; 8 they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ” 9 The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10 Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” (Exodus 32:7-10)

Remember the wording that was used at the beginning of the Commandments? “2I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” But notice how God now refers to the people: “7 The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely…’”

But, as throughout the whole of the book of Exodus, Moses intercedes with God on behalf of the people, talking God down, as it were, from punishing the people. Basically, he talks God out of enforcing the rules of the Covenant that God established with the people in the first place. In other words, despite the flagrant violation of the most basic rules of this relationship, God continues to show grace and forbearance for God’s people. Yes, God gets angry. But God cannot stay angry.

And that’s the lesson that I take from this. That despite everything that Israel does, God remains faithful to the covenant God has established with the people. God’s anger at their inability and unwillingness to observe the laws of the covenant is exceeded only by God’s love for God’s people. If God were to post a relationship status on Facebook, it would clearly be “It’s complicated.” And as you’ll see next week, it’s about to get a whole lot more complicated.  AMEN