# The Sinaitic Theophany



## Peairtach (Dec 1, 2010)

Why did God reveal Himself in the particular way in which He did to the Israelites (His people) at Sinai? And why then? E.g.He didn't do this with Abraham, did He?

Of course to some extent He reveals himself to us in the same way when we read about the events at Sinai.



> For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, "If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned." Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, "I tremble with fear." (Hebrews 12:18-21, ESV)


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## Skyler (Dec 1, 2010)

In Genesis 15 God revealed himself to Abraham with a blazing fire in the darkness and gloom of the night. I don't know if that counts.


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## Jack K (Dec 1, 2010)

Skyler said:


> In Genesis 15 God revealed himself to Abraham with a blazing fire in the darkness and gloom of the night. I don't know if that counts.



Exactly what I was thinking. Genesis 15 (Abraham) and Exodus 19 (Sinai) are quite similar in that both involve smoke and fire, and the making of a coventant. The scale is less intimate at Sinai, but otherwise you might not think the appearances all that different.


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## Contra_Mundum (Dec 1, 2010)

Many years ago now, I read a great piece in WorldMag by JBCheaney, which I think was entitled "the First Advent." It has stuck with me. Some of the basics of these thoughts began there.

The meeting with Abraham is, no doubt, a kind of precursor to Sinai.
At Sinai, after the appropriate precautions have been taken, and the seriousness of this meeting made plain (as plain as the unprecedented can be), Jehovah-God comes down in a revelatory display geared to sensory overload that no IMAX experience could possibly replicate. Up to this point, God's power has been shown indirectly--Plagues, Pillars, Ocean-splits, Water from a Rock, etc. But now he comes and speaks to his people immediately. And they cannot bear it.

And this is a God who is veiled in protective clouds, and still far far off. But the people, who had gathered up to the limits at the base of the Mount, are moved back in fear. No encounter with God is value-neutral, but is fear or love maximized. Sin gives birth to the fear, always, which is why the holiest of men (like Isaiah) feel like they are disintegrating in God's presence. Perfect love casts out fear.

This "glory-display" was appropriate to the "glory-revelation" that was the OT. It was fitting for God to terrorize the people, not least for which reason they would grow in reverence for their mediator, Moses, who would finish speaking with God for them, and who would bring God's Word back to them.

There is also the irony of Israel's covenant-oath ("All that the Lord has said, we will do), taken beneath the noisy, quaking, dark-smoking, and lightning shrouded peak; which is followed almost instantly by the erection of the golden-calf in the very shadow of the presence of God. It might remind us of those folks in Jn.12, who heard the glorious voice of the Father answering his Son out of heaven, who turn and say, "it was thunder," or "it was an angel." The amount of glory doesn't really matter, so far as engendering faith goes. It doesn't "work." Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and that wasn't "glorious" enough. God comes down to Sinai in an inverse-volcanic pyroclastic display, and it creates no lasting impression (in the main).
..........

Now, consider the Bethlehem advent. No glory. No fire and smoke. Nothing that the oblivious world is capable of recognizing. This is hiddenness. This is humiliation. This is the way to the cross. But it is glorious. Unimaginably, incomparably glorious, and wholly disclosed only to the eye of faith.

John Calvin, commenting on Jn.12:27


> The more the Lord of glory humbled himself, so much the more illustrious is the manifestation of his vast love to us.


Emmanuel comes to be with us, himself to Mediate for us, the Word incarnate.


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## Phil D. (Dec 1, 2010)

Contra_Mundum said:


> Now, consider the Bethlehem advent. No glory. No fire and smoke. Nothing that the oblivious world is capable of recognizing. This is hiddenness. This is humiliation. This is the way to the cross. But it is glorious. Unimaginably, incomparably glorious, and wholly disclosed only to the eye of faith.


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## Peairtach (Dec 2, 2010)

Thanks for that, Bruce and others.

I suppose I was particularly thinking about it in relation to the type of covenant the Mosaic Covenant might be, whether purely gracious or "in some sense" having a RoCoW component. That's probably why I stuck this in the Covenant Theology section.

It seems to me that God was (graciously) reminding the Israelites - who are the Visible Church, Covenant People of God i.e. including us - at this particular stage in their development and history, in a particular way, that they were breakers of the CoW, and couldn't get right with Him and approach Him but by His gracious provision which He was also to further explicate through the provisions of the Mosaic Covenant (?)

Whether the Israelites at the foot of Sinai were in a right spiritual relationship with God or not - some were, some weren't - they needed to hear this gracious message, just as we do.

God was just as holy when He met with Adam and Eve before the Fall, but He never met them like this.

This is a theme also throughout the Mosaic legislation - not that there is a Republication of the Covenant of Works - but that God graciously reminds the Israelites that they have broken the CoW in Adam, and that they need to be reconciled to God by grace.

We have it too in the New Covenant, but without all the typological baggage that was needed for the Old Covenant people.


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