Mount Sinai lies in a desert region that the Israelites crossed after leaving Egypt. It was there, even before the exodus, that Moses saw the bush that burned without being consumed and heard God introduce himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Three months after leaving Egypt, the whole people camped in front of that same mountain. Amid cloud, fire and smoke, God came down on Sinai and gave Moses the Ten Commandments and the rest of the laws of the covenant.
While Moses was still on the mountain, the people lost patience and asked Aaron for an idol, the golden calf. The scene exposes the contrast between the holiness revealed there and how easily the human heart turns away from God.
Even so, God renewed the covenant and gave Moses new tablets of stone. Centuries later, the prophet Elijah fled to that same mountain, weary and afraid, and there God did not speak in the wind, the earthquake or the fire, but in a gentle whisper.
In the New Testament, Paul uses Sinai as a figure of the old covenant of the Law, in contrast with the freedom of grace in Christ. The mountain thus marks both the weight of the Law and God’s patience with his people.
