Wisdom? Jealous? If Moses’ words strike us as odd, then we need to take a second look at Sinai because we have failed to catch what’s actually happening there. That’s where we’ll begin in Part One. First, we’ll ask, “What’s the big deal about Sinai? Why should we care what happens there?” These questions are answered by the narrative frame within which the Sinai experience is set: the wilderness stories leading up to it mirror those that follow Sinai. This literary context makes Sinai the high point of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, also called the Pentateuch) and the event that sets the agenda for everything that follows.
Once the frame is in place, in the rest of Part One we’ll study the “painting” itself. The Sinai narratives span fifty-seven chapters from Exodus 19 to Numbers 10. Much happens here, and it’s crucial for the formation of Israel’s identity and vocation. Israel cannot be God’s people without Sinai. (Neither can we, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves.) Most people have a general familiarity with the most famous declaration that takes place there: the Ten Commandments. Nevertheless, misunderstandings abound about their purpose and meaning. We’ll tackle some of these misunderstandings along the way, zeroing in on a single command that has been largely misinterpreted—the command not to “take the name of the LORD thy God in vain” (Exodus 20:7 KJV). Then we’ll look at the other laws that lay out God’s covenantal expectations, including instructions for building the tent in which he is to dwell.
That brings us to Part Two. We’ll look at the story after Sinai—how Israel largely fails at living as the people of God, how the prophets hold out hope for future covenant renewal, how Jesus adopts the vocation of the people of God as bearers of Yahweh’s name, and how the story opens up to include those of us who are non-Jews, enabling us to become who we were meant to be. Rather than abandoning the Old Testament, the New Testament church turns to it again and again as their primary source for ethical reflection. They see themselves in continuity with the Old Testament people of God, carrying forward their mission to represent God to the nations. Their story becomes ours when we join the family of faith.
WHO IS “THE LORD”?
We’ll want to get one thing straight at the outset so there’s no misunderstanding. “God” (elohim in Hebrew) and “Lord” (adonai in Hebrew) are not names. Elohim is a category of beings who inhabit the spiritual realm; angels are elohim and so are the gods of other nations. Adonai is a title that means “master,” whether human or divine. Both words can describe Israel’s deity. However, the God of Israel also revealed his name, inviting the Israelites to address him personally as “Yahweh.”
Scholars today aren’t precisely sure how to pronounce God’s name because in Hebrew we’re given just four consonants, YHWH. Later in history Jews adopted the practice of replacing the divine name YHWH with other words out of reverence. When reading the biblical text, they might refer to YHWH as “Adonai,” which means “Lord,” or “Ha-Shem,” which means “the Name.” In order to remind people not to say God’s name, Jewish scribes attached the vowels of “Adonai” to the consonants of YHWH, resulting in a nonsense word, YaHoWaH, that was meant to remind people to say Adonai. Later still, Christian scholars trying to read ancient Hebrew sounded out this nonsense word, coming up with “Jehovah.” Our English Bible translations follow Jewish tradition of avoiding pronunciation of the name by representing the Hebrew YHWH with LORD in all capital letters.
Whenever you see LORD throughout this book (or in your Bibles!), remember that you’re looking at God’s personal name, Yahweh.
DIGGING DEEPER
If you’re relatively new to the Bible or if you’re rusty on the overall storyline, it would be a good idea to pause your reading and check out the appendix. There I’ve provided links for videos from The Bible Project that will help orient you to the message of Scripture. The first two video links will be especially helpful before you dive into the next chapter. If you already quite familiar with the Bible, then I’d recommend the third video for you. All three will help you get the big picture in mind before we dive into the particulars. If you can read QR codes with your smartphone or tablet, these will take you straight to the videos. Alternatively, you can type in the url or google the title of the video, joining the hundreds of thousands of people who have seen the Bible come to life with the help of The Bible Project. You’ll find other codes that correlate with each chapter in the book in the appendix. The videos nicely complement each chapter of the book, but should not be considered an endorsement from The Bible Project.
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LEAVING EGYPT
Deliverance as Grace
CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING
The first and most commonly made mistake with the Old Testament law is to ignore where it appears. Many Christians assume that in the Old Testament era the Israelites had to earn salvation by following the Sinai law, while Jesus did away with that notion, making salvation available for free. This is a terribly unfortunate caricature of the Old Testament, but it is easily resolved by taking a closer look at the story. Israel arrives at Sinai in chapter 19 of Exodus. That’s where Yahweh will give them the law. However, God’s elaborate deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt takes place in chapters 3–14. If the law were a prerequisite for salvation, then we would expect to see Moses in Egypt making a public service announcement: Hey, everyone—Good news! Yahweh plans to set you free from slavery to Pharaoh. There’s just one catch. You’re gonna have to agree to live by this set of rules. If you just sign on the dotted line saying that you agree to these conditions, Yahweh will spring into action. Who’s in?
Of course, this is not what happens. Instead, God appears to Moses in the wilderness, reveals his personal name, Yahweh, and gives Moses this message for those living under oppression in Egypt:
The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey. (Exodus 3:16-17)
Yahweh delivers them “with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment” (Exodus 6:6) without first checking their homes for idols or performing an audit of their morality. His deliverance has to do with his character and his promise to their ancestor, Abraham, rather than with their righteousness. True, God had given instructions to Abraham and his sons, which they were to obey, but he had not given them any permanent code of conduct.
God made a covenant with Abraham back in Genesis. He promised as many descendants as the stars in the sky (Genesis 15:5), along with a vast tract of land that would become theirs (Genesis 15:18-21). He also had spoken of Israel’s future enslavement in Egypt:
Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. (Genesis 15:13-14)
Now they’ve done their time. Yahweh is ready to put his plan in motion. Abraham’s descendants have become a great multitude (see Exodus 1:7), and they’re about to be rescued. The only requirement is for each family to eat a lamb together and spread its blood on their door frame as a sign for God to protect them from the destroying angel.1
Whatever Sinai represents, it cannot be a prerequisite for salvation. Israel has already been delivered when they arrive. In order to understand what the law at Sinai is for, we’ll need to take seriously where and when it is given and how it is framed. And timing is everything.
PASSOVER
We know this event as the “Passover,” but the English word “Passover” is not a great translation of the Hebrew pasakh in Exodus 12:13. It gives the unfortunate impression that Yahweh is “passing over” them and his attention is elsewhere. While the word can mean pass over, in this context the meaning “protect” makes
more sense. Yahweh protects, or covers, the Hebrew households from the destroying angel who has been commissioned to carry out God’s judgment.2 Yahweh’s gracious protection of his people shows faithfulness to his promise to save them. Exodus 12:23, 27 and Isaiah 31:5 are other examples where pasakh means “cover” or “protect” rather than “pass over.”3
FRAMING SINAI: THE WILDERNESS JOURNEYS
You’ve likely seen Leonardo da Vinci’s painting titled “The Last Supper.”
Figure 1.1. da Vinci’s The Last Supper
In it, Jesus sits at the center of a long table with six of his disciples on either side, grouped in clusters of three. The twelve are not insignificant, but Jesus matters more. He is the center of focus. All the perspective lines point toward his face, which is framed by the window behind him. That window is flanked by windows and four columns on either side of the room, drawing the viewer’s eye to the center. This framing technique is not only effective in visual art. It also works in stories.
Each culture has its own set of expectations for how stories ought to be told. In the Western tradition, the climax belongs at the end. Other cultures arrange their stories differently, some with the climax right in the center. This technique is sometimes called a “ring structure,” “mirror imaging,” or “chiasm,” and it was commonly used in ancient writing. I like to think of it as a literary sandwich. While the climax of a chiasm is not always found in the middle, the turning point of the narrative often is.4
The flood narrative in Genesis 6–9 is an example of mirror imaging on a smaller scale. The way the story is told mirrors the actual event; the symmetrical ebb and flow of the story matches the rise and fall of the water. The structural center of the chiasm, or literary sandwich, is also the theological turning point: “God remembered Noah” (Genesis 8:1).5
A closer look at the wilderness stories immediately before and after Israel’s camp at Sinai reveals a surprise: they deliberately mirror each other, creating a narrative frame that draws our focus to Sinai in the center (see Figure 1.2). If we were tempted to think of the Sinai instructions as a boring appendix to the story of deliverance from Egypt, this framing technique wakes us from our delusion. We’d miss it if we only read parts and pieces of the Torah. But when we read large chunks of text in one sitting, we can begin to see what’s there. As a result, the Sinai narratives take their place as the crown jewel—the center of focus—of the Torah. Let me show you what I mean.
Figure 1.2. The framing of the Sinai narratives
Numbers 33 lays out the full itinerary of Israel’s hike from Egypt to Canaan. There are forty-two camping spots on that itinerary. But if you carefully read the narratives that actually describe those travels before and after Sinai (Exodus 12–18 and Numbers 11–32) you’ll discover that only six campsites are mentioned on either side, each introduced by the same Hebrew phrase: “and they set out.”6 This is not to suggest that one account is more reliable than the other. The itinerary and the narrative serve different purposes. If you made a scrapbook of your summer road trip, you might include a page with your full itinerary. But you might not have taken great pictures at every stop along the way. Some places were more significant than others, so they’ll get more attention on the pages of your scrapbook. So, too, with Israel. The narrator has selected six representative campsites before Sinai and six after, putting Sinai right in the middle, like Jesus in da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” With Sinai deliberately in the center, our eyes are drawn to it. But this is only the beginning of the literary symmetry.
The itineraries mention “desert” seven times before Sinai and seven times afterward. On the way to Sinai we read about God’s provision of manna and quail (Exodus 16), as well as two requests for water satisfied by a gushing rock (Exodus 17:1-7). After Sinai? The same pattern: one story about manna and quail (Numbers 11) and two requests for water satisfied by a gushing rock (Numbers 20:1-16). We’re told that God provided manna daily in the wilderness as they traveled from Egypt to Canaan (Exodus 16:35) and obviously the people would have needed regular access to water, but the narrator’s selective telling contributes to the literary framing effect that points to Sinai.
But there’s more. God’s angelic messenger protects the Hebrews from a foreign king once before Sinai and once afterward (Exodus 14:19-20; Numbers 22:21-35). Before Sinai, Israel fights the Amalekites (Exodus 17:8-16). After Sinai? Again, Israel fights the Amalekites (Numbers 14:39-45). Before and after Sinai, Moses meets with a Midianite family member and receives guidance (Exodus 18; Numbers 10:29-32). Before and after Sinai, Moses is weighed down with leadership responsibilities (Exodus 18:17-18; Numbers 11:10-15) and begins delegating those responsibilities to others (Exodus 18:24-26; Numbers 11:16-17). This example involves a deliberate quotation. In Numbers 11, Moses explicitly reuses Jethro’s language from Exodus 18. Speaking of Moses’ leadership responsibility, Jethro had said, “For this thing is too heavy for you. You are unable to do it alone” (Exodus 18:18, author’s translation). Moses takes up these words after Sinai, saying “I myself am unable alone to carry this whole people for it is too heavy for me” (Numbers 11:14, author’s translation).
What’s more, the Israelites’ response to the report of the scouts in Numbers 14 mirrors the response to Pharaoh’s army before they crossed the sea (Exodus 14:10-12)—they lament ever having left Egypt. With such a close match between stories that took place before and after Sinai, you might begin to wonder if anything has changed during Israel’s year at the mountain. Indeed, it has.
MIDDLE OF NOWHERE: A PLACE OF BECOMING
In spite of the similarities before and after Sinai, a great transformation has taken place. The Hebrews fled Egypt as a mixed multitude, refugees and former slaves seeking a better life. They leave Sinai as a well-organized army, registered and marching tribe by tribe. But change wasn’t easy. Big questions plagued the first part of their journey. Are we safe? Where are we going? What’s on the menu? Who’s in charge? What sort of god is Yahweh? And what does Yahweh expect of us?
We can relate. It’s like being lost on a hike. You know where you want to end up, but you can’t figure out how to get there because you don’t know which direction you’re facing. Or maybe you’ve felt lost in life, stuck in between where you’ve been and where you’re going. You know what you’re cut out to do, but you can’t get the traction you need to get there. There’s a word to describe this state: liminality. It’s from the Latin word limen, which means “threshold.”7 Imagine yourself standing in the doorway, neither in nor out of a room. That’s liminal space. An airport, for example, is a liminal space. Nobody lives there. We’re all passing through on our way to somewhere else.
The first people to start talking about liminality were anthropologists. They used it to describe a stage in rituals that change someone’s status or identity. Sociologically speaking, a liminal place is a transitional space where a person lacks social status and is reduced to dependence on others. Every human ritual the world over includes an element of liminality, from coming-of-age rituals to funerals. Liminality has since been applied more broadly to psychology, politics, popular culture, and religion. In a moment, we’ll explore Israel’s experience of liminality. But first, I want us to think about the ways we experience liminality, because all of us do! For example, a wedding ceremony sets the bride and groom apart and lingers in liminal space. During the ceremony the couple is neither married nor unmarried. They wear new, symbolic clothes and explore other symbols of their new life together (rings, candles, vows, kiss). The congregation witnesses their change of status as the minister pronounces them “husband and wife” and welcomes them to rejoin the community with a new identity.
When a woman becomes pregnant, she enters liminality. She is officially on the threshold of motherhood, and yet she has not yet experienced most of its aspects—nighttime feedings, diapering, discipline, pushing a stroller, singing the ABCs. Liminality is usually temporary, but it can be prolonged. My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage.
Part of my grief was because I found myself in the strange position of having been pregnant, but lacking a child to hold. Mother’s Day that year was especially awkward and painful. Was I a mother? Or wasn’t I? I didn’t really belong in either category.
Few people actually enjoy liminality. We have an inborn desire to seek order and belonging and predictability. Just a few months after that awkward Mother’s Day I became pregnant again and happily left that liminal state behind. My grief largely dissolved when the ambiguity of my status was resolved. Others are not so fortunate. Immigrants or refugees sometimes spend long stretches of time in a liminal state—lacking papers to legally work or even stay in their host country, always feeling like an outsider, and never knowing if they should put down roots or start packing.
College intentionally creates liminality. Students leave home and enter an entirely new environment with a new set of expectations and roles. With the help of faculty and staff, they scrutinize themselves in order to reshape their identity and discover their vocation. But they are not welcome to stay. Just when they feel like they know the ropes, they are thrust into the “real world” to begin the process all over again as full-fledged adults. Graduation is a ritual designed to mark that transition between academia and the outside world. To some extent, it redefines students by qualifying them for new roles in society. Crossing the stage, they cross the threshold to a new season of life.
For Israel, the wilderness journey from Egypt to Canaan is liminal space. Far more than just a place to pass through, it is the workshop of Israel’s becoming. The wilderness is the temporary destination that makes them who they are. Liminal places always do this. They change us.
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