The Wilderness of Sinai is the vast, arid region of the Sinai Peninsula where the Israelites camped for nearly a year, shortly after leaving Egypt and crossing the Red Sea.
There, before a mountain rising out of that wilderness, the people heard the voice of God, received the Ten Commandments, and entered into covenant with the Lord through Moses.
In that same camp the Israelites set up the tabernacle, the tent where the glory of the Lord came to dwell among the people.
It was also in the Wilderness of Sinai that Israel was organized as a nation. Moses numbered every man fit for war, tribe by tribe, under God’s command.
There the people celebrated the first Passover after leaving Egypt, and there two sons of Aaron died for offering strange fire to the Lord.
When the cloud marking God’s presence lifted from over the tabernacle, the Israelites set out from this wilderness toward the Wilderness of Paran, on the way to the promised land.
The Wilderness of Sinai thus marks the passage of a people of freshly freed slaves into a nation organized around the Law and the presence of God.
