Exodus 24:13

The covenant has just been made. The people promised to do all that the LORD had said, and Moses sealed the covenant with blood (Exodus 24:3–8). Then Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and seventy elders went part of the way up the mountain and ate and drank in God’s presence. Now God speaks to Moses alone: “Come up to me into the mount, and be there.” He is calling Moses higher than the elders went, and the words “and be there” tell Moses that he is coming to stay. Verse 18 shows how long that stay would be.

The speaker is the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of God, the name of the God who has bound himself to Israel. Everything in the verse begins with him. He summons Moses, he promises the tablets, and he says of them, “which I have written.” The tablets Moses brings down at the end of these weeks are “two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God” (Exodus 31:18), and Moses later reminds Israel that the LORD wrote these words in two tables of stone and gave them to him (Deuteronomy 5:22). What Moses receives carries God’s own authority. The psalmist praises this law as perfect, sure, right and pure, sweeter than honey (Psalm 19:7–11), and Paul calls it holy, just and good (Romans 7:12).

“And Moses rose up” answers God’s call at once. The verb qûwm is the ordinary word for rising or getting up, and here it marks Moses setting out in obedience. With him goes “his minister Joshua.” The word behind minister, shârath, means to attend or serve, and it is used for close personal service and for service in worship. Joshua is Moses’ own attendant, a trusted helper who stays near him.

Joshua has already led Israel’s fighting men against Amalek (Exodus 17:8–16), and this climb takes him nearer to God’s revelation than anyone but Moses. He goes higher than the elders, while Moses alone goes on into the cloud. God is preparing the man who will follow Moses. Joshua is later appointed in Moses’ place (Numbers 27:18–23), charged by Moses before all Israel with the promise that the LORD will go before him (Deuteronomy 31:7–8), and sent by God to lead the people over Jordan into the land (Joshua 1:2). The years spent serving at Moses’ side were part of how God made him ready.

The verse calls Sinai “the mount of God.” The word for mount, har, is the plain word for a mountain or hill country. This is the mountain, also called Horeb, where God first spoke to Moses from the burning bush (Exodus 3:1–6). The verse names Moses at both ends, which keeps him at the centre of the scene even with Joshua beside him.

Before he climbs, Moses gives the elders their orders: “Tarry ye here for us, until we come again unto you.” The verb yâshab means to sit down, dwell, remain or abide, and Moses asks them to stay settled where they are until he returns. The words “until we come again” make the arrangement a temporary one and promise his return.

Moses provides for the camp while he is away. “Behold, Aaron and Hur are with you,” he says, and the “behold” (hinneh) points the elders to the two men they are to turn to. Aaron is Moses’ elder brother, whom God had given him as his spokesman (Exodus 4:14–16), and he was soon to be consecrated as high priest. Hur had stood with Aaron holding up Moses’ hands in the battle with Amalek at Rephidim (Exodus 17:12). Both were men the people already knew and trusted.

“If any man have any matters to do, let him come unto them.” The Hebrew behind “any man” is baʻal, which usually means master, owner or husband. Here it describes a person who “has” a matter, someone with a real concern of his own that needs settling. The word for matters, dâbâr, means “word, speech” and also “matter, affair, thing,” and in this phrase it covers whatever disputes, cases and questions might arise in a great camp. Aaron and Hur were to act as judges and leaders until Moses came back, and the people had a clear place to go.

This follows the counsel Jethro gave Moses when he was judging the people alone from morning until evening (Exodus 18:13–26), which led to capable men being set over thousands and hundreds. Moses later recalls charging those judges to hear cases fairly (Deuteronomy 1:16–17). God would later put his Spirit on seventy elders to share Moses’ burden (Numbers 11:16–17), and the apostles would appoint men to care for the church’s widows so that they could give themselves to prayer and the word (Acts 6:1–4). God cares for order and justice among his people, and he shares the work out among faithful people he has prepared.

“And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount.” The verb is ʿâlâh, to go up or ascend. The cloud, ʿânân, is the sign of God’s presence. God had told Moses that he would come to him in a thick cloud (Exodus 19:9), and this is the same presence that went before Israel as a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night (Exodus 13:21–22). The cloud would later fill the tabernacle (Exodus 40:34–35) and Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 8:10–11), and God said he would appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat (Leviticus 16:2).

The cloud does two things at once. It shows that God is truly there, and it veils his glory, shielding human eyes from the full sight of the holy God. This is the mountain where God made his covenant with Israel (Exodus 19), and now the place where its terms are given is wrapped in his presence.

Verse 17 turns from Moses to the people in the camp: “And the sight of the glory of the LORD was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel.” The word for sight, marʼeh, means a view or appearance, the thing seen. The nation had been camped below the mountain since they came into the wilderness of Sinai (Exodus 19:1), and every one of them saw this. When the LORD first came down on Sinai he descended upon it in fire (Exodus 19:18), and now his glory shows as fire on the summit.

“Devouring fire” is ʼêsh ʼâkal, fire joined to a form of the verb to eat or consume, fire that burns up what it touches. The picture is of God’s holiness, his purity and his power, before which all that is unholy is consumed. Fire has marked his presence before, in the bush that burned and was not consumed (Exodus 3:2) and in the pillar of fire by night. Moses would later tell Israel, “For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 4:24), and the letter to the Hebrews says to believers, “For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). Isaiah asks, “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?” (Isaiah 33:14).

The sight confirmed to everyone below that the God who had delivered them was present and was making his covenant with them. It also showed why they needed someone to go up on their behalf. Then, in the next verse, Moses walks into that very glory at God’s call.

“And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount.” The verb behind “gat him up” is the same verb for going up as in verse 15. Moses walks into the heart of the cloud that looked like fire from below, and he climbs to the top. Then the chapter closes: “and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.”

The words are ‘arbâ‘îym, forty, with yôwm, day, and layil, night. Forty days marks other times of testing and preparation in Scripture. The rain of the flood fell forty days and forty nights (Genesis 7:12), Elijah journeyed forty days and forty nights to Horeb, this same mountain (1 Kings 19:8), and Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights in the wilderness and was tempted there (Matthew 4:1–11).

Moses stands between a holy God and his people, and in this he points to Jesus, the one mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5), the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6) and of the new testament (Hebrews 9:15). The law Moses received was holy, and it also showed how far we fall short. It could give no life (Galatians 3:21), and it served as a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). Jesus came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and under the new covenant God puts his laws into the hearts of his people and writes them in their minds (Hebrews 10:16).

The glory that rested on Sinai under a cloud came and lived among us in Jesus: “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). John goes on, “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17), and he says that the only begotten Son has declared the God no man has seen (John 1:18). The Son is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of his person (Hebrews 1:3), and in him all fulness dwells (Colossians 1:19). He is the true dwelling of God among men, the fulfilment of what the glory abiding on the mountain promised.

Moses climbed a mountain to meet God. Jesus came down from heaven (John 3:13) and then ascended far above all heavens (Ephesians 4:8–10), where he ever lives to make intercession for his people (Hebrews 7:25). Moses left Aaron and Hur to keep the camp until he came back. Before Jesus went up, he sent his disciples to teach all nations (Matthew 28:18–20) and promised them power when the Holy Spirit came upon them (Acts 1:8). He is the LORD who is our judge, our lawgiver and our king (Isaiah 33:22), and he will come again.

Moses alone could enter the cloud. Through the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), the way is open to all who believe. The veil of the temple was torn in two when he died (Matthew 27:51). We have boldness to enter the holiest by his blood, by a new and living way (Hebrews 10:19–22), we come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16), and through him we have access by one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:18). Believers have come to mount Sion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant (Hebrews 12:18–24). The fire of God’s presence came on the disciples at Pentecost as tongues of fire (Acts 2:3), and by the Spirit we are changed into the image of the Lord from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Even Joshua, climbing at Moses’ side, points to Christ. Jesus is the Greek form of the name Joshua, and the letter to the Hebrews, speaking of the rest Joshua gave Israel in the land, points to the greater rest that remains for the people of God (Hebrews 4:8–10).

These verses show us a God who is holy beyond our bearing and who still comes near. He writes his will down so that his people can know it and teach it, and what he writes lasts. He calls a mediator into the cloud for the sake of those waiting below, and he gives them faithful leaders while they wait. The fire on the summit is good reason for reverence, and the call from the midst of the cloud is good reason for confidence, because the same God who burned on the mountain calls people to himself.

Through Christ the way Moses alone could take is open to every believer, and the word of James rests on that: “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you” (James 4:8). The care Moses took over Joshua and over the camp also shows that God’s work goes on through people he prepares and trusts, from one generation to the next.