Moses called for the elders—who acted as the representatives of the whole people and “laid before their faces all these words from the Lord.” At once all the people answered together and said—“All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.”——Let us hope that a fair proportion, including at least many of the representative men of the nation, were thoroughly sincere in this profession. It would be grateful to our feelings to believe that they all both understood and meant what they said. But, alas! subsequent developments forbid this belief. It was however the formal consent of the nation. As a whole people they gave their voice to this definite proposal from the Lord their God—that he would be their God and that they would be his people.
The next thing in order, is the giving of the law. A people who propose to be the Lord’s and to obey his voice, should be made acquainted with his will in the form of law. They must be informed what he would have them do. Rules of heart and life, precepts defining the reverent homage and worship due to God, and the acts required or forbidden as toward their fellow-men should be made unmistakably plain. Preparationsare accordingly made for the formal and solemn promulgation of this great moral law. It is noticeable that in these preparations nothing seems to be omitted that might conduce to a deep and solemn impression. The people are specially enjoined to sanctify themselves, and two full days are set apart for this purpose. They were commanded to “wash their clothes”—significant of the personal purity of heart which God required.——Then the surroundings were of the most imposing and impressive character. The whole people were gathered in an open plain which lay at the foot of Sinai. The most stringent precautions forbade all curious, irreverent approach. Not a man or beast might touch the mountain on pain of death. Definite bounds were set for the people over which no one might pass. There before them full in view stood the awful mount—rugged, grand, cleft with fissures, broken with deep ravines, towering in sublime height and all enwrapped in thick clouds out of which lightnings flashed—the whole mountain rocking under the footsteps of the Almighty and reverberating with his awful thunder, and the voice of trumpet exceeding loud so that all the people in the camp trembled. The written description of this scene gives us a sense of its ineffable grandeur and sublimity. “Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. When the voice of the trumpet sounded long and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake and the God answered him by a voice.”——Essentially the same descriptive points are repeated after the record of the law as promulged from Sinai (Ex. 20: 18–21). “All the people saw the thunderings and the lightnings and the noise of the trumpet and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off, and said to Moses: Speak thou with us and we will hear; but let not God speak with us lest we die.”See also the renewed mention of this scene in Deut. 4: 10–12.[39]
The Moral Law as given from Sinai.
Passing from the natural surroundings and scenes of Sinai to the law itself, let it be observed carefully that this law of ten commandments (Ex. 20: 1–17 and Deut. 5: 6–21) is to be somewhat broadly distinguished from the other “statutes and judgments,” whether civil orreligious, which the Lord gave to Israel by the hand of Moses;—this distinction being apparent in the following points and for the reasons which they suggest:
1. It was proclaimed by God himself in a most public and solemn manner in the hearing not of Moses alone, but of the elders of the people at least, if not of the people en masse, assembled before and around the glorious mount.
2. It was given under circumstances of most appalling majesty and sublimity—the mountain being enveloped with clouds and thick darkness, yet at some moments all ablaze with the lightning’s flash and rocking beneath Jehovah’s feet.
3. It was written by the finger of God on two tables of stone (Deut. 5: 22).
4. It differed from any and all other laws given to Israel in that it was comprehensive and general rather than specific and particular.
5. It was complete, being one finished whole to which nothing was to be added—from which nothing was ever taken away. (“And he added no more” Deut. 5: 22. See also Mat. 5: 18). The other statutes, as we shall see, were subjected to future modification.