Exodus 33:1-6--The Command to Leave Sinai

The Command to Leave Sinai
33 The Lord said to Moses, “Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give it.’ 2 I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 3 Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

​4 When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. 5 For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.’” 6 Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.

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There are places in our lives where we wish we could "camp out" and stay there forever, or maybe places where something so bad happened that we are afraid to move on from.  Either way, Mount Sinai fit both categories for the Hebrews.  People had a radical encounter with God there that that "messed them up" and made it hard for them to move on.  They either were in love and in awe of Him, or they were terrified by Him and His power and wrath that had been displayed or maybe a little of both.

Usually God would just make the pillar of cloud or pillar of fire move and the people would follow it, but this time God spoke audibly to Moses to tell him to tell the people it was time to break camp and to get up and go.  It was finally time to make progress towards the Promised Land (though did you notice that once again God tested Moses to say "you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt"?  This time it doesn't seem that Moses replied as he had before).

The LORD promises to send His angel before them (probably the preincarnate Christ) and that He, the LORD, would go up before them as well.  This greatly distressed the people because of the words that Moses had spoken to the people during their rebellion with the golden calf.  Moses had promised that if God went up with them in the midst of their rebellion that He would consume them all (because His holiness could not live among their "stiff-necked" rebellion).  This seems like it should have been good news to them that they were making progress towards what God had promised, but they were almost certain that God was leading them away from this place to kill them all, and it caused a time of great mourning for them--we see this by their removal of all of their jewelry and what is called "ornaments" here--from that point forward, they would no longer adorn themselves with these ornaments and would very soon give all of them to the creation of the Tabernacle.  The people wouldn't even want these treasures anymore and Moses would have to tell them to stop giving because they had given more than enough.  This is the spirit of the people as they departed--they were scared or what lay ahead and they knew they would not survive without God's help, but they were afraid to be near to Him because of their sin (much like how Adam and Eve's first instinct after they sinned was to cover themselves and hide from God in the Garden of Eden).

Now that we've read the entire account of what happened at Mount Sinai from Exodus 19:-32, reflect on what the author of the epistle to the Hebrews says to those of us who are in Christ:


Hebrews 12:18-29
English Standard Version

A Kingdom That Cannot Be Shaken
18 For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest 19 and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. 20 For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” 21 Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” 22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

25 See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. 26 At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” 27 This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. 28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.